


Casino Royale

by katiemickgee



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 007, Casino Royale, F/M, James Bond - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-04
Updated: 2015-09-01
Packaged: 2018-04-12 21:38:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 43,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4495635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katiemickgee/pseuds/katiemickgee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A ruthless killer. A legendary lover. And the world’s only hope against total annihilation. When Agent Margaret Carter, recently awarded her Double-Oh status for the extermination of two important threats, is sent into a high-stakes poker game against a criminal known only as the Red Skull, she isn’t entirely pleased to have an American pretty-boy as her only back-up on the job. But Steve Rogers isn’t just the money—he’s an important ally. And by the end of it all, Steve might be all Carter has to keep her alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Luck Be a Lady

The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning. Agent Margaret Carter sniffed haughtily and recoiled, and took a medicinal sip of a tasteful little number she’d conjured up a few evenings before—a martini, three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, and a half of Kina Lillet, shaken over ice and served in a chilled glass with a thin slice of lemon peel. This one was a triumph; all it needed was a name. And as Carter saw it, if she was supposed to be the high-rolling daughter of a billionaire, she might as well burn some of her fictitious father’s cash on the perfect cocktail. She was sure she’d win it back for whichever country was currently funding this excursion.

From her spot at a low table and cozy chair across the bar on the main casino floor, Carter signaled to the bartender for another drink. When the bartender brought it over—personally, Carter noted with a smirk of satisfaction—she waved him away with a fifty-Euro tip and settled deeper into her armchair to ruminate on just what had brought her here, to the Casino Royale in Montenegro, tucked away in lush countryside, her every whim catered to, with a beautiful man sharing her suite.

A few weeks ago, Carter had arrived back from her last mission, hunting a terrorist cell in Madagascar. She’d honestly thought she’d killed the cameras before entering the embassy, and anyway, she hadn’t woken up that morning thinking, “I bet I’ll get to brutally murder a known bomb-maker today!” Honestly, nothing about the whole mess had really been her fault, so she hadn’t thought it fair when N put her on suspension and suggested a long vacation on some stretch of white sand somewhere far, far away from Madagascar and the Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate branch in London.

That was how Carter had found herself in N’s private apartment, the penthouse of a swanky tower in Westminster, trying to get herself reinstated and half-hoping to run into N. The process had taken a bit longer than anticipated, and Carter had helped herself to three fingers of N’s best scotch and sat to await his return, hoping her change of duty status would go through while she waited. She’d also been snooping, as she’d been told spies were supposed to do—and she hoped she could buy enough time to allow the encryptions and information to be uploaded to a personal cloud drive.

When N had arrived, flanked by lackeys, he’d shooed the junior agents out of the room and poured himself his own drink, then sat across from Carter with a look on his face that told her to start talking. “I thought N was a randomly assigned letter,” she began, sure to keep her tone inappropriately perky, just to annoy him. “I didn’t know that it stood for—”

“One more word out of your mouth, and I’ll kill you myself,” N had said, his tone surprisingly jovial, if his eyes looked a bit weary. And then they’d had a long discussion—another one—about the importance of keeping up SHIELD’s appearances with the public, and how it was probably best to go about not murdering terrorists—yes, even terrorists had rights—without at least first making a show of interrogating them. Carter had been especially forbidden not to murder them in such obvious places.

In truth, N had spoken, and Carter had spent the time drinking scotch and planning her next moves. She’d heard the spiel before, just after landing back in London, directly outside the terminal in Heathrow. N had been touring a new SHIELD facility Stateside, and he made a show of exclaiming what a coincidence it was that their planes had arrived back within half an hour of each other.

But even before N had even had time to chew her out originally for the mishandling of the events in Madagascar, Carter had been able to use N’s intel to dig deeper into the contact she’d found on the dead bomb-maker’s phone. His name was Zola—some kind of scientist-cum-businessman, head of R&D at Hydra Industries. He’d made a lot of money by what Carter would call playing God, and that money had clearly been filtered through legitimate business ventures. But when one took a closer look, it was easy enough to tell that most of the small corporations Hydra funded were fictitious fronts. And it took a very special kind of crook to fully wash the scent of blood off his dollar bills.

With a fairly complete dossier on Zola in her grasp, thanks to N’s unhindered access to the SHIELD criminal database, Carter had then traced Zola to someone known only as the Red Skull—German in origin, no first or family names, no known current address, no other biographical information. It was his information she’d been digging into the night N had come home to find her awaiting him. Add this wealth of new reading material and the knowledge that Zola had a home in Jamaica, where he and his current fling enjoyed spending their summers, together, and Carter had suddenly nodded agreeably when N suggested laying low, and noted that she’d seen the worth of taking a holiday.

Of course, her holiday had ended when she’d left her companion—Zola’s preferred flavor of man-candy, young and large and of ambiguous sexual preference—with a caviar spread for one and a rather serious case of dissatisfaction to gallivant off to Miami, where she’d almost been arrested for stopping another terrorist—another spider in Red Skull’s web—from blowing up a Lockheed passenger jet the company had built for some private investor by the name of Xavier. From what Carter could tell and N had confirmed, Xavier was clean; the Red Skull had only hoped to destroy one of the biggest advancements in passenger travel to date.

N had explained it upon meeting Carter back in Jamaica, where they’d returned to find the local authorities swarming over the corpse of Zola’s companion. Carter had felt a twinge of sorrow at the sight of the perfectly sculpted body, now gray and lifeless. Maybe the poor lad wouldn’t have had to die if Carter hadn’t insisted on cleaning out Zola’s stash of cash—and taking his car—at the poker table a few evenings before.

“Zola doesn’t leave loose ends,” N had said, his eyes on the body now neatly zipped into a bag for disposal, “because the Red Skull won’t abide them.”

“Another lapdog,” Carter had said, distaste evident in her tone.

“When will criminals learn to have a little integrity?” Despite the gravity of the situation, N had smirked at her. But the look had turned grave once more as the local paramedics rolled the corpse past. With an incline of the head, he’d indicated a quieter part of the resort. “Let’s take a walk, 008.”

The Red Skull, it seemed, was a gambling man. He played cards and roulette and the stock market with equal fervor, and he used his unusual mathematical prowess and inborn good luck to launder money for countless under-the-table organizations across the globe. He was listed as a “banker” in SHIELD files, which was fair enough. The problem for the Red Skull was that the bank had run dry—he’d played with the money of far too many powerful, very bad people, and he had only limited time to make it back and clean up his debts before he was put out of business for good.

“After any disaster, natural or manmade, the stock market crashes,” N had explained on that beautiful day in paradise, gesturing for Carter to have a seat at a wrought-iron table in the shade of three perfectly formed palm trees. If Carter hadn’t been a highly trained secret agent, she would have found it almost too easy to get distracted by it all. “Fear does that. The Red Skull knew this. But he'd already invested billions of dollars in criminal assets in this Xavier's new Lockheed prototype, with plans to short the company—sell quick, buy back, turn a profit. I'm fuzzy on the details, but the finance guys get it. All I know is, the man was just happy to get to blow up a plane."

Carter knew for a fact that N understood exactly what he was explaining; he wasn't a man to act on the knowledge of others. He had to know it himself. She listened quietly.

"In the blink of an eye," N concluded, "Red Skull could have had the money to pay off his debts and disappear back into the ether, leaving behind a trail of fall guys and an impenetrable alibi.”

“And SHIELD wouldn’t have been able to touch him,” Carter had said, nodding along.

“Not just us—no CIA, no Interpol. Dust in the wind. The next time the Red Skull surfaced probably would’ve been his funeral.”

"Something tasteful, of course? Heralding him as a national hero of wherever he's really from?"

"Undoubtedly."

N had stood up then, and signaled to someone over Carter’s left shoulder. She’d stood, too, to see an agent approaching with a heavy box. He’d set it on the table and snapped it open smartly, revealing some kind of monitoring tech embedded in the cushioned sides of the box—also a very large injector. He’d removed this, and with a sigh, Carter had held out his arm. With a seemingly annoyed huff of air, the injector had slid a tracking implant into Carter’s arm.

She’d met N’s eye and deadpanned, “Ow.”

The implant had been scanned, and Carter had to admit that she’d been impressed to see her vitals and location immediately listed on the computer screen in the case. But she’d also been mildly perturbed to have her privacy removed in one quick, sure sweep.

“Red Skull has set up a high-stakes poker game at the Casino Royale in Montenegro,” N had explained, nodding for the tech agent to gather his equipment and leave them. “Ten million buy-in, with an option for five million. Winner takes all. He needs to win to pay off his debts; you need to win to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Carter had raised an eyebrow and, as was second nature, played it cagey. “The most I’ve ever wagered at cards was pennies. And that was a particularly tough game of Go Fish.”

“I’ve asked around the service,” N had replied, his tone allowing only a little of what was an obvious aggravation. “You’re the best card player we have. And if your track record thus far is any indication, I’d say you’re damn lucky.” N had paused to look back out over the resort: the white sand, the aquamarine sea, the blazing white sun.

Carter had stopped beside him. “Luck has nothing to do with it,” she’d noted.

N hadn’t seemed interested. “Your flight leaves tonight, for London. Get your bags together and await a delivery—you’ll need the files, and you’ll have to dress the part of the wealthy gambler. Tell H if you need anything else.”

Carter had given a curt nod; she knew when she was dismissed. “Sir.”

She’d only gotten six paces away when N had called her back. “I won’t wish you luck, but keep in mind what this game means. And don’t bother to check in.” He’d smiled, and glanced at her arm. “We’ll know how to find you.”

“Sir.” Carter had bobbed her head again, and only just managed to keep her face stony until she’d turned away. Walking to her cabana on the beach, she’d heaved a weary sigh. The idea of being babysat—even remotely—didn’t play well with her.

But then, she’d paused on the porch of her cabana and turned her face to the sun. Closing her eyes, she’d inhaled deeply. She’d want the scent of this place in her mind, the sound of the sea rolling in and out in her ears, as she went toe-to-toe at the poker table with a man who, if he was even half the man her incomplete dossier told her he was, would most certainly do his damnedest to kill 008 before she could foil his scheme.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can't tell me Agent Peggy Carter wasn't BEGGING to become a pseudo-007, featuring Steve as an ace Bond girl. This will be inspired in part by both the book and movie, with a generous smattering of MCU good times.
> 
> Enjoy the ride! I know I am.


	2. Strangers on a Train

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which 008 meets Mr. Steve Rogers, and bantering and good old fashioned sizing up ensue.

Three days before sipping her martini in the lobby of the Casino Royale and preparing for the most dangerous card game of her life, Carter sat on a high-speed train through Montenegro’s green countryside, awaiting a glass of claret and a guest. She sat on the aisle in a plush chair in the dining car, and though she seemed relaxed, her back against the seat was rigid and her muscles remained tense, poised for combat. It was an art, to fake relaxation, and a necessary one—the only way to defeat the enemy was to let them think you’d already been defeated.

The guest arrived first. Carter heard footsteps approaching and looked away from the passing countryside outside the window, and into the deep blue eyes of a tall man in a well-cut, if unfortunately colored, business suit. He had neatly trimmed blond hair and carried a brown attaché case to match his suit, and he slid into the seat across from Carter with only the barest hint of a smile on his face. Without introduction or preamble, the attaché case still in his lap, he announced, “I’m the money.”

Carter leaned around the table to get another look at his thighs in the tailored suit, and then met his eye. “You certainly are. All ten million of it.”

The man sighed, as if he were used to that kind of commentary, and finally set the case in the seat beside him and pulled a business card from his suit pocket. “Steve Rogers,” he said as he offered up the card, by way of introduction, and held out a hand.

Carter didn’t immediately take it. “The International Monetary Fund,” she read off the card. “Your parents must be very proud.” After a beat of silence, she took his hand, and they shook. “Carter. Margaret Carter.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Ms. Carter.” Steve smirked. “Or do you prefer ‘Agent’?”

“I think ‘ma’am’ has a nice ring to it, don’t you agree? Ah, thank you.” Carter smiled up at the waiter who had, at last, arrived with her wine, and then looked to Steve. “Drink?”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

“Another, if it isn’t too much trouble. Many thanks.”

The waiter bowed his head slightly and walked away.

Carter turned her attention back to Steve. “I like a person who knows a good glass of wine.”

“I’m usually more of a whiskey drinker, to be completely honest, if I drink at all. But I’m considering myself on vacation.”

“That will most likely be the cover story, so I suppose it is best to get into character now,” Carter conceded. The second glass of wine was left by the same waiter, and though Carter felt the first, dull pain of hunger, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten since London, she waved him away. “Still perusing,” she said, tapping the menu cover by way of apology, waiting for him to leave so the conversation could continue.

“Should we get down to business?” Steve asked, taking Carter’s cue and awaiting the waiter’s disappearance.

“I dislike discussing money matters over dinner—gives me indigestion. Let’s get to it now.”

“Ten million,” Steve began, “already wired into your account, for admission to the game. With another five—” Here, he tapped the case again. “—should you need it. And should I deem it a…prudent investment.”

“And what brings a nice banker boy all the way out to this hamlet?” Carter asked.

“Nice boy,” Steve echoed, and took a long draught of wine. “That’s a new one.”

Carter laughed aloud at this. “I find that hard to believe. Sensible suit. Shined shoes. Slicked hair. You’ve been a ‘nice boy’ all your life.”

“And you?” Steve shot back.

“Your standard maladjusted murderer-for-hire,” Carter replied with an easy shrug.

Steve considered her for a beat longer than Carter normally would have allowed. “No,” he pronounced.

Carter took a sip of wine and then settled back—actually settled, allowing herself the first moment’s respite in months—into her seat. She let her eyes wander over Steve Rogers, from the tabletop to the crown of his annoyingly symmetrical head, and said, “You keep touching your wineglass.”

Steve looked at his hand, seemingly surprised to find it resting on the stem. He lightly tapped the delicate glass and cleared his throat. “So?”

“You tap it when you’re nervous,” Carter continued. “Or as close to nervous as you allow yourself to get anymore. You lead a difficult childhood, full of hardship—childhood illnesses, I’d say, and a wealth of them, at that. No one thing, and nothing severe. But you had to work hard to overcome it. I’d also wager you had a mother who doted on you, until she couldn’t anymore. Your father wasn’t part of the family portrait—he died nobly, admirably. He didn’t leave.” She picked up her own wine and took another dainty sip. “You didn’t attempt small talk when I mentioned your parents being proud of your work, which leads me to think they’re dead. You carry yourself like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders. I’d have said you were the oldest of a substantial number of children, but I think you were just forced to look after yourself when you were young; an orphan.”

She was gratified to see Steve’s finger pinging the slim curve of his wineglass. He noticed her noticing, and stopped.

“You aren’t respected at work, which you’re…oddly accepting of,” Carter continued. She held up a finger, to indicate that this was her final point. “You don’t come from money or politics like the rest of your colleagues, and you don’t wear the fancy ties or sip the three-hundred-dollar scotch. You’re an American handling the currency of multiple countries, and I’d assume most of your colleagues would hope you’d just pack up and ship home; a cushy Treasury job, perhaps. But you’re a rare bird. I think it doesn’t bother you because—good God, could it be you actually believe in the work you do?”

“Is this why they picked you?” Steve replied, his tone cool, though not necessarily unkind. “Your uncanny ability to read people allows you to pick up on tics and tells?”

“Gambling is all about knowing the odds, not necessarily your opponent.”

Steve smiled, lopsided and entirely American. “So, what do you think your odds are, in favor of having pegged me in your self-important little speech there?”

Carter grinned and straightened up. “I’d bet good money on it. But I’m not the one with the attaché case full of hundred-dollar bills, am I?”

Steve’s hand moved to the case. “Euros, actually.” He brought his hand back to lift his wineglass and finish his wine. “Even when you sit back,” he began, “your shoulders don’t slouch. You’re in predatory mode 24/7. You sleep poorly, and hide it even worse with expensive makeup and…hm. Caffeine pills, I’d say. You don’t seem like a coffee person.”

“Don’t I?” Carter said sweetly.

“And no energy drinks. No crash. Because you don’t allow yourself to be off the job, even when you’re asleep. You can’t allow it, because they don’t respect you at work, either. You’d think an advanced organization like SHIELD would know to treat a great asset well, no matter what their gender, but old habits die hard in the boys club.”

“I was wondering when you’d get around to mentioning my great asset,” Carter said, cheeky. She knew it was childish, but she didn’t feel like engaging in a battle royale of wits this evening. Besides, the wine was probably just going to her head. She’d have to keep that in check at the casino.

To her gratification, Steve laughed. “I had thought of letting it go unmentioned, but once noticed, it couldn’t be ignored. Anyhow.” He coughed and cleared his throat. “You’re distracting me from my analysis. That’s not fair. Where was I?

“Right. You read people before they open their mouths so you don’t have to bother yourself with getting to know them. You grew up lonely, in some lap of luxury where no one much cared what Margaret had to say or what she wanted to do. The way you wear that clearly expensive business dress and jacket shows that you have taste, but you don’t like that you have it. You’ve been trying to shed the vestiges of your upbringing.” Steve smiled slowly, and finished his wine. “Your parents aren’t alive anymore, either. They were your last ties, and now you don’t have to lie to anyone about what it is you really do.”

With great care, Carter collected her wineglass and swallowed the rest of the claret down in one go. She set the glass aside and dabbed her mouth with a crisp white dining napkin, and then picked up her menu and smiled over the top of it at her companion. “Might I interest you in some dinner?”

Steve picked up his own menu and shrugged. “The IMF’s paying. Can’t say no to that.”

They ordered quickly and tucked into a luxurious meal, the likes of which Carter only ever seemed to see on missions. Steve had a trout of some kind staring up at him from the fine china, paired with finger potatoes and a mixed vegetable medley, which Steve attacked first, like a three-year-old showing off his good eating habits; Carter had selected a good skirt steak with a cream sauce. They got a bottle of wine for the table and spoke little during the meal, though Carter felt Steve’s eyes on her as often as she glanced at him, still trying to decide whether or not she’d made any progress with the tiny cracks in his metaphorical star-spangled armor.

As the food vanished from the table, they eventually got back to the wine, and then turned conversation back to the task at hand. “If gambling isn’t about reading people, and it’s all about the math,” Steve pondered aloud, “then why aren’t more people good at it?”

“Because not everyone’s good at maths,” Carter replied.

“I don’t buy that.”

“You don’t?”

“I don’t.”

Carter grinned. “Not even for ten mil?”

Steve’s hand drifted to the attaché case. “I think it’s about human nature,” he said. “You have to restrain your own tells and play off the tells of others. You’re both predator and prey; it’s animal instinct.” He shrugged and gave his lopsided grin. “And dumb luck.”

“Luck is useless,” Carter said, and cleared her throat to cover the note of sudden vehemence that had crept into her voice. “It isn’t real. It’s a mythological god to whom bad players pray. When I talk about weighing the odds in a card game, I don’t mean counting cards, or forcing logic onto something that's so clearly illogical, left to chance. It’s simply sizing up the cards on the table, envisioning what might be left in the deck, and deciding whether to bet, check, call, or fold.”

“But that’s poker.”

“It’s to be a poker tournament I’ll be playing in, isn’t it?” 

“What about…I don’t know, baccarat?”

"Ridiculous game,” Carter pronounced. “I never play it.”

Steve conceded. “You’re telling me you’re walking into the Casino Royale with only some stats training and a cold demeanor, and you plan to hold your own?”

“I plan to win. Isn’t that the preferred outcome?”

“Indeed.” Steve poured half of the wine left in the bottle into Carter’s glass, and then poured out the rest for himself. “Because I’m assuming it has crossed your mind, Ms. Carter, ma’am, that should you lose, the International Monetary Fund, the largest source of funding for countries in need on this planet, will have directly funded the one man hell-bent on destroying said planet.”

It had. But Carter thought it vulgar to discuss it in such black and white terms, and especially at the dinner table. Leave it to an American with good cheekbones to point out the obvious.

Seemingly unassuming, Steve finished his wine and tapped the glass twice. He smiled across the table at Carter, who smirked back.

“Nervous?”

“For luck. Good evening, Ms. Carter.”

“Good evening, Mr. Rogers.” She watched him carefully fold his napkin, and then collect the attaché case from the seat beside him. At last, he stood, and Carter got another good look at his long form. He was built like a linebacker straight out of some old-school American football game—triangle torso beginning at long shoulders and tapering to an athletic waist, with arms and legs thick with muscle, all hidden beneath a suit that was tasteful enough, though ancient. It had to be a hand-me-down from a friend—or his father.

He dipped his head in farewell and made a show of walking down the aisle with great care, never pausing, never stumbling, never looking back at the table. Carter nearly regretted not following him to his room, but not quite. Instead, she ordered herself one last glass of wine and the dinner bill, and let her thoughts turn back to the rolling countryside passing outside the window. By morning, they would be at Casino Royale.


	3. A Lunch Meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carter takes Steve to meet their local contact, an agent named Martinelli with whom Carter shares a past.

At the train station in Royale-les-Eaux, Carter and Steve disembarked together and were met by a man, dressed as a chauffeur, who addressed Carter by name. She recognized him—one of N’s minions—and beckoned for Steve to follow the man to a sleek black town car parked at the curb. Steve made a big show of hurrying ahead to get the door for Carter, but she rolled her eyes at him, as politely as she could, and said, “A moment, please.”

Steve slipped around the door and into the backseat of the car, as another man—another one of N’s, this one dressed as a train porter—walked by and quietly handed Carter a small waterproof pouch. He tipped his hat and said only, “Ma’am.”

“Thank you,” she replied, shaking his hand briefly and then allowing him to be on his way. Carter, the pouch tucked discreetly under her arm, now climbed into the car beside Steve. In a matter of moments, they were navigating the narrow streets of the small town, on their way to the casino and resort.

“What’s that?” Steve asked, the moment Carter unzipped the bag and began digging around.

She pulled out two passports, one British and one American, and flashed the covers at him.

He nodded. “So, who are we now?”

Carter pulled a stack of neatly folded papers from the pouch, scanning her cover story and the accompanying British passport. “I’m Ms. Isabelle Galore, of the London Galores, heir to some kind of shipping fortune. I’m not clear on the details and no one else much is, either, and no one really minds, as long as the family keeps my trust fund filled to the brim. I enjoy gambling as a pastime, because I have money to burn. And you…” She flipped to another page, smirked, and then opened the other passport—American, as Carter doubted Steve would’ve been able to pull off any other nationality convincingly. “You are my longtime beau, Mr. Richard Bigg. I like to call you Dick.”

“You’re making that up—” Steve argued, reaching for the passport.

Carter held it just out of reach. “You’ll just have to trust me, Mr. Rogers. Mr. Bigg, excuse me.” She arranged the pouch and paperwork primly on her lap, zipping it all away neatly. “We’ll have a shared suite, which I hope won’t be an inconvenience.”

“But you’ll be written out of the will if you take part in anything…unseemly,” Steve said, smiling as he settled back into his seat beside her. “Your father’s an old-fashioned man—he can handle the gambling, but not the men. So, we’ll have separate rooms, for appearance’s sake.”

“Oh, of course. We can’t have Papa Galore catching wind of our liaison.”

At the casino, Carter quickly slipped the pouch into her handbag, and then allowed Steve to carry her bag. He had a rolling suitcase of his own, and a carry-on-sized backpack slung over one shoulder. If anything, no one would question his rather vulgar—and somehow exciting—American-ness.

The moment they walked through the door, before they could even reach the front desk to check in, the concierge smiled up at the pair and hurried over with a business card. “I was told to give you this immediately upon your arrival, Ms. Carter. The gentleman who left it said to tell you that it was from a friend.”

Carter knew she could—perhaps should—play dumb at the mention of her own name, but this didn’t seem like an attack so much as a show of strength. She took the proffered card, only a little startled by the creamy black paper printed with a crimson skull. “Splendid,” she said smoothly to the concierge, adding a small smile. “My thanks for your attentiveness.”

The concierge bowed her head and returned to her post. Carter continued walking toward the front desk, casually tucking the business card into the pocket of her suit jacket. She didn’t look at Steve, though she could feel his nerves radiating off him in almost visible waves of anxiety. As they approached the front desk, the man behind the first computer met Carter’s eye and gave a welcoming smile.

“Checking in?” he inquired.

“The names are Carter and Rogers, but you’ll find the reservation under Galore,” Carter replied. She hazarded a look at Steve, who stared back at her, nearly frozen with shock. A beat later, the desk clerk handed over two room keys and wished them a good stay, and Carter led the way to the elevator bank.

“What the hell was that?” Steve demanded, his voice low and angry.

Carter pulled the business card from her pocket and flashed it at him again. “You’re familiar with the particulars of this misadventure, yes? Mr. Red-Bloody-Skull already has us figured out; our cover was probably blown before I even got my hands on it. No use hiding when the enemy’s showing his hand. We just have to play smarter.”

The doors on one of the elevators opened, and Steve hurried inside. He held out a hand and said, “Give me my key.” Carter did so and, reading the look on Steve’s face with her usual care and clarity, stepped back to allow the doors to close without her. “I’ll leave your things in your room,” Steve said, still heated, as he vanished into the enclosed box.

Carter didn’t have long to ponder Steve’s emotional state. “Ms. Carter?” a familiar voice said, and the desk clerk appeared at her elbow, offering an unmarked manila envelope. “This was left for you.”

Carter thanked the man and collected the package, then ducked around a stately marble column for a modicum of privacy. Inside the envelope was only a set of car keys, the fob emblazoned with the Aston Martin logo. Carter tucked the keys into her pocket and strolled back toward the main entrance, tossing the empty envelope on the front desk as she went. “Recycle that,” she said to the clerk, with mock severity, and he smiled and nodded in reply.

Once out in the casino’s parking lot, Carter clicked the button to unlock the doors of her new car. A row away, one of the sporty machines beeped, and she followed the sound to a gorgeous silver Aston Martin. It was a recent model, inferior in looks to a pet vehicle dating back to 1962 that Carter kept locked up tight in a garage in Chelsea, though with all the modern amenities a spy on the run might need. Carter lived her life largely alone—devoid of any real human connection, anyway—and her few vices included good (though limited) company, the creation of unequaled cocktail recipes, and automobiles. Almost giddy, she slid into the driver’s seat and examined the Aston Martin’s contents.

There was the standard central console, with a radio, CD player, USB hookup, and a big screen for GPS and God only knew what else, plus a glove compartment on the passenger side. But when she opened the drawer, three more slid out, offering a first aid kit on the top drawer, a spare mobile and accouterments in the second, and a .45 Beretta in the last. Carter had a slimmer, smaller-caliber lady-grip holstered just under her arm and a small cache tucked into her suitcase, but this was her weapon of choice.

“Love you, too, N,” she said aloud, smiling warmly, as if her superior could see her. Perhaps he could, with the bloody implant in her arm. She checked that the Beretta was loaded, with the safety on, and then replaced it, closed up the drawers, and locked the car up for the evening. If things went well, she wouldn’t need it. But, then again, the Red Skull already knew who she was and where she was staying, and he undoubtedly had contacts keeping tabs on her every move. There might be a time she and Steve would need a getaway vehicle. And if things didn’t take a turn for the worst, she could still impress her companion with a quick drive up the coast, preferably at sunset, and with enough wine and food to lock themselves away in some villa for a weekend and not emerge until Monday morning.

Carter was getting ahead of herself. At present, she wasn’t sure Steve Rogers even particularly liked her all that much. She went back to the hotel lobby and made directly for the elevator, riding up to the nineteenth floor and then walking the long, silent hall to their shared suite, number 1942.

Inside, she found an immaculate sitting room, everything dripping in white and silver and gold. She noted, almost instinctually, that should it come to a life and death fight with a would-be assassin, it would be nigh impossible to remove all the blood from the upholstery. Pale pink flowers—she could never keep them straight—adorned a sleek coffee table and each side table, and a small refrigerator acted as minibar. Someone—she assumed Steve—had already collected a bucket of ice and helped himself to a bottle of expensive mineral water. To Carter’s right was a short hall to one bedroom, with her bag sitting on the floor in the center on the doorway, marking her place. To her left was the mirror image of the right, though without the bag, and she heard the sounds of someone puttering busily in the other room.

Carter collected her bag and went to her room, laying her purse on the bed and unpacking her things quickly. She had a few dresses and gowns in her case that needed hanging, and a few more that would, with luck, arrive by that evening, elegant numbers express from London and perfect for a few tense rounds of Texas hold ‘em with a room full of high-rollers, spies, and criminals.

Once her unpacking was done, her guns tucked away in the folds of blouses and her false passport rolled into a pair of argyle socks, Carter went about setting tiny traps for would-be intruders. Her precautions wouldn’t stop anyone from jumping her in the middle of the night and murdering her in her sleep, but a piece of hair smoothed delicately over the seam of an unused drawer and a sprinkling of face powder on the bureau would let her know if anyone entered and searched her room.

When this was done, Carter at last moved to the ajar door across from the bed that led to the bathroom. She knocked once and ducked her head in, catching Steve in the middle of rearranging tiny bottles of hotel shampoo and body wash as he brushed his teeth.

“It seems we share a bathroom,” Carter noted, taking in the glass-walled shower and the separate claw-foot tub tucked into the corner.

Steve raised his eyebrows in greeting, then spat in the sink and rinsed his mouth out. “Old habits die hard, sorry. Everything all right?”

“Personal hygiene is very important,” Carter replied. “All’s quiet—for the moment, at least. I don’t believe we were followed from the train.”

“But the Red Skull knows we’re here.”

“It might be nice, actually, to drop the pretense of the cover story and focus on the cards.” She smiled a little. “I don’t want to cost the IMF too much.”

“When do we get to meet the mysterious poker enthusiast, anyway?”

“The tournament begins tomorrow, promptly at nine in the evening,” Carter explained. “It’ll probably go all night, unless I or Red Skull decides to off the other in the middle of a bathroom break.”

“Fantastic,” Steve deadpanned, and crossed back into his bedroom.

Carter followed, resting in the bathroom doorway and waiting, like a vampire, to be invited into Steve’s sanctum. His room was identical to hers, though he’d already tossed his backpack onto the lavishly upholstered easy chair. His suitcase had vanished, presumably unpacked and stored away, like a civilized human being.

“I have the chance to win a lot of money, you know,” Carter continued. “At the very least, the IMF will make its money back. That much I can promise.”

“Unless—”

“Unless I’m assassinated, yes.”

“I was going to just say, unless you lose. But sure. That, too.” Steve finally noticed his backpack on the chair, and halfheartedly zipped it closed. He shook his head. “And I thought international economic systems were overwhelming.”

“The good thing about this whole situation is that Red Skull may know our names, but we also know something about him.” Carter gestured to Steve’s bed. “May I?”

He waved at the duvet and nodded. “Please.” He moved his bag and fell into the chair, as Carter took a spot across from him on the mattress. It felt nice to sit down, especially on something of this quality—this was one of the finest hotel mattresses Carter had ever had the pleasure to try out.

“We know the Red Skull has connections here,” Carter said, “within the casino, at the smallest, and perhaps reaching high enough in Montenegro’s government to be irksome. Depending on his hold on the casino, that might bring a bit of concern of rigging the game to the table, so to speak, but I don’t think he’d try it. The Red Skull, despite the title, seems to be a…fair man.”

“With an eerie name like that, I somehow can’t imagine it,” Steve said.

“He has his own set of standards, I’d wager. He could rob a bank for the money, after all, but he's chosen not to. It might be too vulgar for his tastes, or maybe he prefers the mental challenge to a physical one. Perhaps I'll ask him before I turn him over to SHIELD's interrogators. But the Red Skull has to win that money back, and to try and cheat might only mean he loses everything all over again—including his life. I’m not concerned on that front. Bodily harm? Perhaps. But he won’t cheat at cards.” Carter pondered the situation for a moment. “Anyhow, we have over a day to prepare, which is more time than I’ve had in the past. I’d like to take a few laps of the casino this evening, perhaps after a nice dinner in the high-rollers club, just to get a feel for the crowd, the dealers, and the tables. But we can’t play.”

Steve shook his head. “What’s the point in that?”

Carter raised her nose in the air. “We don’t mingle with the commoners, precious. My money goes directly into the hands of international terrorists, or no one’s at all.” She dropped the haughty tone and added, “Until then, we have a lunch engagement.”

“Lunch?” Steve echoed. “We? Now?”

“You’re quite good at that.” Carter smirked and stood. “Come along, Mr. Rogers. I’ll drive.”

Steve was properly impressed by the Aston Martin; that was one bonus point marked in his favor. With the narrow, historic streets and the proliferation of tourists, Carter couldn’t exactly show off what the car could really do, but the satisfying purr of the engine was enough to give her a bit of a thrill. She made sure to drop a hint about how much better the car would do on a longer drive, preferably around some twisting cliffs overlooking the Adriatic Sea, and Steve, to her trained eye, seemed amenable. Once she’d won back the IMF’s money and sealed the Red Skull’s fate, perhaps there would still be time for a bit of extracurricular fun.

Carter parked outside a small café at the edge of Royale, in a lot edged on one side by tall hedges. On the other side of the hedges was an outdoor dining area, mildly crowded with the warm spring weather, and Carter scanned the tables for signs of their contact. She spotted her almost immediately—her fastidiously arranged curls, her tidy blouse and skirt, her legs crossed at the knee, an open expression hidden behind oversized sunglasses. Carter sidestepped the hostess, indicating that she and her friend were meeting a third there for lunch, and led Steve over to the table and the woman.

Her name was Angela Martinelli, and she was beautiful. Carter put that at the top of her personal list of pros, though a very close second was how good a field agent Martinelli was. Via a brief telephone call back in London, before the whole mad dash had begun, N had said Carter would need a local contact, and Carter had known exactly who to ask for.

“I want Martinelli,” she’d said, almost before N could get the suggestion out.

There had been a pause, and then N’s low voice asking, “Is that…wise?”

“Whatever could that mean, N?”

He’d relented, probably because he hadn’t felt like rehashing it. Martinelli was their Central European expert at SHIELD, an experienced field agent who also just so happened to be fluent in several of the region’s subtler dialects and deeply familiar with the tumultuous history of the surrounding countries. The one thing that always threw Carter for a loop was Martinelli’s heavy New York accent. Whenever the woman opened her mouth to use her mother tongue, a grotesque mangling of English poured forth. Luckily for Martinelli, it was also part of her charm—especially for Carter, who hadn’t been able to help herself from falling into bed with her fellow agent whenever they happened to cross paths. The personal relationship hadn’t ended on the best of terms—thus N’s reluctance to set up this meeting—but the working one was as strong as ever.

Martinelli spotted them before Carter could explain even a fraction of this to Steve, which was perhaps for the best. The other agent smiled broadly up at them and then rose from her seat with practiced grace. She leaned in to kiss each of Carter’s cheeks, then did the same to Steve without pausing for introductions.

“English, you bring tall, blonde, and broad to this table, and you don’t even warn a gal?” Martinelli crowed, and laughed brightly as she motioned for them both to sit. Steve glanced between Martinelli and Carter, bemused, and Carter met his eye and gave a small shrug.

“Steve Rogers, this is Angela Martinelli,” Carter introduced.

Martinelli reached off and took Steve’s hand in a tight grip, pumping his hand up and down. “Angie. Hi. Pleased to meet you.”

“Likewise,” Steve replied, giving back as good as he’d got.

“Mr. Rogers and I only just arrived at our hotel,” Carter apologized to Martinelli, as they all took their seats. “You haven’t been waiting long?”

“Nah, I’ve got a place around the block and I’ve got a ton of TV to catch up on. Plus, they know me here, and they treat me good. I pop in once and awhile for a drink, to pick up some of the local color.” She pulled down her sunglasses and leveled her gaze at Carter, communicating something nonverbally. Carter understood; Martinelli already had her fingers on the pulse of Royale-les-Eaux, and she had plenty to share.

They babbled for a bit about the train trip from the capital, and the previous plane trek from abroad, and then Martinelli began interrogating Steve about some of the finer points of personal banking, such as whether or not she really had to open a savings account. Somewhere in the middle of it all, they each ordered a cocktail and some light dishes to share, and once they’d all had a few sips and bites, something in Martinelli’s stance shifted, and Carter knew she was ready to get to work. Nothing in the agent’s chipper personality changed, and she still sometimes gave a desperately American exclamation of disbelief or excitement. But she also lowered her voice and spoke a bit about the local history and hierarchies.

“Over my left shoulder, English, you’ll see an old guy, nice suit. Flanked by two babes in Gucci. Got ‘em?”

Carter nodded and sipped her gin and tonic. “Go on.”

“The girls are nobodies, but the man’s the police commissioner here in town. Our pal Red is bribing him—has been since the Wall came down—and he’ll turn his head if any of us show up on a slab.”

Steve finished his whiskey and soda in one nervous gulp and gestured desperately for another. Carter patted his hand companionably. “You can leave anytime you like, you know,” she said gently.

“What about the money?”

“I can take care of one briefcase.”

Steve’s easy smile returned. “Not with that kind of cargo. Boss’ll have my head if I drop five million bucks with a strange woman and turn tail.” He squeezed her hand, just once, and briefly, and said, “I just need to adjust to the death talk. Give me six more hours.”

Carter studied him for a moment, and was satisfied with the resolve evident in the set of his shoulders and jaw, and the glimmer in his eye. He was nervous, true, but he was enjoying this. He was a banker, after all, not a clandestine agent. But Carter suspected the air of adventure had begun to sink into his psyche.

There were sirens in the distance, and it became evident that they were approaching. Across the table, Martinelli smirked. “I thought about trying to bribe the guy, too, but we couldn’t out-spend Red. So, instead, I leaked some damning information to the up-and-coming deputy.”

On cue, three police cars screamed to a halt and six officers, led by a man in a suit, entered the outdoor dining area and approached the older man and ladies Martinelli had indicated. After a brief, heated exchange of words, the older man was carted off in handcuffs and the girls ushered along as witnesses.

When the dust had settled, Martinelli continued. “I’m working on a few local businessmen, a couple politicians. But I can guarantee that Red won’t be able to hold the cops over your head anymore.”

“I could kiss you,” Carter replied, and was only mildly surprised to realize she meant it.

Martinelli grinned broadly. “Buy me dinner first, English, sheesh.” They shared the grin, and a private look, and Carter knew she’d made the right decision in asking for her help on the mission.

The rest of the meeting continued in this same, pleasant manner. Martinelli and Steve swapped nostalgic stories of Americana, as neither had been back to their homeland in quite some time, and their fast-moving conversation and upbeat attitudes were infectious. The pair realized they had grown up mere blocks from each other in Brooklyn, and in-between Martinelli’s updates on the Royale goings-on, they discussed old delis and favorite bakeries. It almost made Carter wish she’d been a part of it all, too.

At the end of the meal, Martinelli paid—cash, courtesy of SHIELD—and excused herself. “Hot date with some very heavy files on some very awful people,” she quipped, and with a final round of kisses and promises to meet them at the casino for the tournament the following evening, she was gone.

Carter and Steve lingered awhile longer, finishing their cocktails and enjoying the rising heat of the day. It was rather glorious to know one had nothing to do until late the following evening, Carter reflected, all those seemingly endless stretches of hours to be filled with one’s own choice of activity. Aloud, she suggested, “A walk, Mr. Rogers? We should really get to know the area, should rapid escape become necessary.”

“As good a plan as any,” Steve agreed, jovial, and they exited the café to explore the surrounding town.

Carter felt some of the tension of the past weeks—months, years—leaving her shoulders as she and Steve walked the cobblestone streets and dodged approaching Vespas. They nearly touched, and Carter thought about taking Steve’s hand once or twice, just to establish a connection. Because for better or for worse, they were both embroiled in this; they were partners now. But Carter settled for the warmth of his skin, so close to hers, and found herself grateful for the cover being mostly for naught. This way, whatever happened next could happen naturally—no playacting, no lies, and with a generous helping of organic chemistry.

She let her hand swing at her side, and her little finger just brushed over Steve’s. That was enough to remind him that she was there, and enough to remind her that she had to win the game not only for herself, for SHIELD, or even for the world. She’d have to win for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Angie! YAY. More cameos in coming chapters!
> 
> [Also, Royale-les-Eaux was the name of the town where all the action happened in the original book CASINO ROYALE. It's a fictional town, supposedly located in France, but I've moved it to the movie's Montenegro because reasons. Go with it.]


	4. A Cocktail By Any Other Name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carter takes Steve on a reconnaissance stroll around the casino, and then treats him to dinner in the high-roller club. Slightly drunken conversation ensues.

They returned to their room at the Casino Royale late in the afternoon, and immediately set to preparing for dinner. Carter had warned Steve that though there would be no special occasion that evening, they would both still be required to dress the part of high-roller and plus-one, and she reiterated her warning that under no circumstances were they to play at any of the smaller tables set up for the tourists on the main floor of the casino.

Steve mock-frowned at that. “But I wanted to try my luck at the craps table.”

Carter smiled sweetly. “If you behave yourself, maybe I’ll still blow on your dice.” As his face reddened, Carter shut his door to the bathroom and locked herself in to change and freshen up. She knocked when she was done and crossed back to her bedroom, straightening the room and resetting her traps, half-listening to Steve puttering in the bathroom.

Steve leaned into the room and Carter was glad to see the kind smile on his face when he caught sight of her dress. “You look great,” he said, awestruck. It was a cocktail dress that fell just below the knee, an A-line cut in a midnight blue, and she’d paired it with a chic up-do and a teardrop diamond on a delicate chain around her neck. It was hardly the best she had, as she had to save the big guns for the Red Skull, but it would make a statement that evening.

“Well, thank you very much,” she replied sincerely. She hadn’t had someone compliment her without expecting something—sex or information, mostly—in a long time. “SHIELD, you know—spare no expense. And you…”

Steve stepped into the room and turned around once for her to examine him. He wore a nice enough tux, and she had to give him credit for even thinking to bring one. She glanced him over, from collar to shoulders to waist to feet, and made note of his sizing.

“It’s the best I’ve got,” he said, a bit sheepish.

Carter came over and straightened his lapels. “You look perfect,” she said with a smile, meeting his eye and tilting her head a little to study him up close. “Every inch the charming American ruffian. Just the sort of man an English shipping baron’s daughter might fall for.”

“But watch out,” he replied. “I might be a gold digger.”

“I’ll be sure to keep my diamonds locked up tight.”

“And your heart?”

Carter looked up at him curiously, and found a strange look in his eye—desire, of course, but also a wariness, nearly a fear. She wasn’t sure if it was the mission making him anxious anymore, or if it was all her fault now. She removed his worn handkerchief from his pocket and refolded it, then tucked it safely back into place.

“Heavily guarded,” she replied, refusing to meet his eye. “Shall we?”

She turned to collect her purse from the bed and straighten the duvet, and heard Steve cross back through the bathroom to his own room. They met in the sitting room, and Carter caught Steve’s arm at the door. “One moment.” She pulled a small pair of terrifyingly sharp scissors from her purse—in case she should find herself tied up, or in need of shears to cut through a ticking bomb’s wires, or something of that ilk—and snipped one of the pink flowers from its stems, and then tucked it into the right lapel of Steve’s jacket. She stood back to admire her handiwork, and Steve stood a little taller, preening for her. She laughed. “Perfection.”

Steve offered his arm without a word, and they exited.

It was just about seven o’clock by the time they reached the lobby, and the sounds of a lively crowd floated to them from the direction of the casino floor. The casino took up most of the back area of the main floor of the hotel, situated just behind the front desk and elevator banks and sunken six steps below lobby level. The expanse of red patterned carpet was mostly covered by green-topped gaming tables and the sensible shoes of European travelers. Everyone had gussied up for the evening, though Carter found it easy to spot the real gambling threats and separate them from those looking for fun and a little luck. The real gamblers wore sleeker suits and gowns, and dialed back the flash of their watches and jewels, while the tourists did their damnedest to announce with their bold, off-the-rack outfits that they belonged in this set.

“I think I’m more afraid to enter that mess than for you to play cards against Red,” Steve muttered to Carter. He’d picked up Martinelli’s nickname for their nemesis; it tickled her.

She laughed quietly and nudged him gently in the ribs with her elbow. “Twice around the park, darling. I’ll buy you a drink with some of Papa’s money.”

They strode along at the fringes of the crowd, pausing occasionally at tables where the action seemed the most dramatic and the stakes the highest. They took a short break at the bar, where Steve ordered whiskey—the most expensive they had—on the rocks and Carter gave careful instructions for her as-yet-unnamed martini, and they had two rounds of drinks before diving back into the masses. After eventually returning to their starting point at one of the sets of stairs the led back up to the lobby, Carter indicated that they should truly enter the fray, and they wandered aimlessly around the hot press of gamblers, winners and losers alike.

After passing two hours in this manner, Carter had made note of three service exits, all six of the sets of steps that led to the lobby, heavy double doors that led to the casino restaurant, and a door at the back of the bar that probably led down into a wine cellar, or, if she was lucky, a kitchen with another exit. They’d also passed the golden door, marked private, that would undoubtedly lead to the private table where the Red Skull would host his life or death game.

  
She decided that she had enough information, and they’d both had enough. “Let’s sup. I’m famished. The high-roller club is on the penthouse level.”

At the stairs, they paused to allow an older couple to proceed first, and Steve, apparently acting on impulse, leaned over and pressed his lips to Carter’s cheek. She glanced at him, startled, and he replied with a toothy grin, just the kind of look one would expect on the face of someone desperately, distractingly in love. He was a fine actor, Carter noted. She didn’t want to think of the alternative just yet—not until Red Skull had been defeated.

“Part of the cover, right? Or are we dispensing with all that for good?”

“We might as well give them something to talk about. And the dossier did say that we’re very much in love,” Carter conceded, and squeezed his arm. Steve raised his head a little, still smiling.

At the entrance to the exclusive dining club on the twenty-fifth floor, Carter didn’t even have to give her name to get them a table. The maître d’ knew her by sight, or else was simply swayed by her expensive dress and shoes. He glanced at Steve’s tuxedo with the barest hint of distaste, but when Carter moved closer to Steve and ran an affectionate hand over his back, the maître d’ backed off. He was too much the professional to say a word. He led them to a fine table near the floor-to-ceiling windows, overlooking the town and the mountains beyond, and Carter imagined she could see the near-full moon sparkling on the ocean, miles away.

“I could get used to this,” Steve said, stretching his long legs and then settling comfortably into his chair. “Very nice.”

“It’s one of the real perks of this life,” Carter revealed, smiling a little. “All the fine food and booze you can get your hands on. Especially for me. Living alone in London, I’d eat cold sandwiches and beer until the day I died. Out here, I get to indulge.”

“This is probably the nicest place I’ve ever had dinner in my life,” Steve revealed.

“Well then, it sounds like we’ll have to treat ourselves.”

They ordered caviar to start—the second most expensive kind on the menu, so as not to seem too ostentatious—and Steve sat back and allowed Carter to decide on their entrees. They also ordered cocktails to begin the evening right—a glass of wine for Steve, and the carefully cured martini Carter had created.

It was late in the evening for a proper meal, and most of the high-rollers who would’ve had access to the dining club were either out seeking refreshments elsewhere or already embroiled in exclusive games, so Carter and Steve largely had the restaurant to themselves. As they drank, awaiting their food, they talked. They discussed previous gambling experiences, at first, and then a bit about their thoughts on the hotel, the casino, and Royale-les-Eaux thus far. Eventually, over caviar, Steve leaned forward and lowered his voice a little, speaking just under the low buzz of ambient noise in the club.

“Can I ask you a work question?”

Carter raised an eyebrow and carefully spooned up a mound of fish eggs. She didn’t usually much go for the stuff, but it had seemed appropriate to order. She’d also been half hoping Steve would turn up his nose at it like a toddler, but he’d already eaten most of their shared order.

He seemed to take her lack of negative response as a signal to ask away. “What exactly is it that you do? For—” He lowered his voice again. “—SHIELD?”

Carter glanced around the club. The tables surrounding them were empty and the waiters had congregated across the room, awaiting finished orders from the kitchen. She turned back to Steve and smiled. “You don’t have to whisper.”

“I’m still not sure how secretive the whole thing is.”

“SHIELD as an organization is more or less in the public eye. A lot of what actual agents do, however, ends up in folders with big red ‘top secret’ stamps all over the fronts.” She paused. “I wonder how one nabs that job.”

Steve smiled a little. “I honestly didn’t know what I was getting into when they sent me to meet you on that train.”

“I hope it hasn’t been a disappointment,” Carter replied. “You’re based in Paris?”

He nodded. “I don’t speak much of the language, but our office is mostly English-speaking. It can get lonely, though.”

“So far from home,” Carter agreed. She signaled the waiter for another round of drinks, and that he could clear away the caviar dishes. “I never thought I’d miss England, but I got desperately homesick eight and a half hours into my first assignment. It was awful—I nearly turned tail without even meeting my contact.”

“Where were you?”

“Tasmania.”

“Did you have to kill anyone?”

Carter felt her stomach tighten, but she was sure she’d kept her body language loose enough for Steve not to have noticed her discomfort. “I sometimes forget that the list of criteria for achieving Double-Oh status isn’t common knowledge.”

“What do you have to do?” Steve pressed. “Is it a field test? Is there a verbal component? Worse than the SATs?”

“Not being American, I couldn’t say…”

“The A-levels, then, or whatever it is you do over there.”

“Did you do well on your SATs?” Carter replied smoothly.

Steve seemed to know when he was being deflected, and backed off. His silence was timely, too, as their meals arrived—bass, fresh from the Adriatic—as well as fresh drinks. Carter didn’t often need much food to keep moving, as she’d learned from training—and experience—that the lavish meals weren’t always guaranteed on these outings. But she’d seriously underestimated how famished she apparently was, and they both tucked into their food with relish, killing any attempts at conversation for the first ten minutes the plates were on the table.

“Did you grow up wanting to be a banker?” Carter asked eventually, swallowing down a bite of fish with a generous draught of her martini. “Was there someone in Brooklyn who made you money-hungry?”

“Not especially,” Steve replied, musing over his answer for a moment before delving further into the story. “I guess I just got old enough to decide I wanted a steady career, and banks seemed like okay places to pass the time. And I wanted to be able to touch ridiculous amounts of money every day.”

Carter laughed. “That’s fair. There’s something special about holding a few hundred thousand pounds in new bills in your hand, isn’t there?”

“When I was just a teller, we used to sneak into the vault sometimes at the end of the day and build money forts.”

Carter choked on her drink, not entirely sure whether he was kidding or not, and Steve laughed loud enough for the few other diners to glance over curiously.

“Did you ever get caught?” Carter managed.

Steve gave her a shrug that was surprisingly coquettish for a man his size. “The world may never know.”

“Oh, aren’t you precious—SHIELD knows everything. I could find out in an instant.” With that comment, Steve seemed about ready to start asking work-related questions again, so Carter waved the waiter over to inquire about one more round of drinks, and then dug back into her meal. She waited until fresh drinks and glasses of water had appeared on the table before speaking again.

“I came up with this recipe myself,” she said, not haughty, but conversational, and held up her martini glass for Steve to examine.

Steve raised a hand to take it from her. “May I?”

She nodded and handed it over, glad when he took the stem delicately and avoided the entire romantic-comedy-worthy moment of their fingers touching on the cool glass. They weren’t schoolchildren. If—and when—the time came, Carter would gladly fall into bed with Steve. It was just a matter of saving the world first.

He took a second sip before handing the glass back, and nodded slowly. “I’ve heard you order it twice now, and I still have no idea what’s in it,” he said, “but I like it.”

“This and that. And a twist of lemon.” Carter considered the glass. “I have yet to name it.”

“You’ll come up with something.”

“Perhaps. But with my luck, SHIELD will stick it in a top secret folder before I have a chance to tell anyone.”

Steve drained his old glass, took a gulp of water, and then took a small sip of his fresh glass of wine. “Do you want to know something about me?”

Carter leaned in with exaggerated interest. “Of course.”

“I wore this tux to my senior prom,” Steve said. “It’s a…like, a dance thing we have in American schools.”

Carter smirked. “I’m aware.”

“Well, you didn’t know about the SATs, so I thought I’d explain. Anyway—sure, I had to have it altered a couple times since then, but it’s never done me wrong.” He looked down at his shirt and vest, and smiled fondly. “I was a scrawny kid. Had to get everything let out a bit. The vest is new, though.”

“I think you’re a bit drunk, Mr. Rogers,” Carter noted.

“I think I’m a bit perturbed that you’re not, ma’am.”

Their conversation devolved after that, though Steve did switch to water to wash down the last of his meal. Carter felt a bit more unsteady than she’d ever feel comfortable letting on, but finished the martini before the dishes had been cleared away. They toasted each other, and to the fine meal, with fresh, cold water, and once Carter had signed the bill to indicate that the meal should be charged to room 1942, Steve offered his arm, and they retired for the evening to their separate rooms in the shared suite.

But Carter couldn’t sleep. First, she placed a quick call to SHIELD’s cover line, and was connected to her pal, H, who handled R&D, weapons, and basically anything elite agents needed in the field. She placed an order for one fresh, designer tuxedo, and gave the specs she’d guessed at by studying Steve’s torso, and asked that it be delivered the following day.

“I’m a tech guy, not a wizard, Carter,” H had grumbled.

Carter had smiled so sickeningly sweetly, it had dripped into her tone. “I have faith in you. Sweet dreams, H.”

After hanging up with H, she found herself down in the casino again at three in the morning, sipping another one of her martinis and pondering the life she’d led thus far. It wasn’t a morbid act—she wasn’t counting her sins before meeting her maker, or anything of the sort. On the contrary, though she knew the risks, she fully expected to best the Red Skull when they met over the private tournament table in eighteen hours’ time.

Instead, as she sipped her drink, she let her thoughts turn to the people wandering the casino floor. It was nearly as crowded as it had been when she and Steve had walked the floor hours ago, and she noticed some of the same faces at the tables that she had spotted earlier. There were no windows in the casino for just such a reason—the gamblers got lost in their games, playing late into the night, riding adrenaline highs that would only run out when they’d really, truly lost.

Carter sipped her martini. She’d really have to come up with a name for the damn thing. Maybe, after she won the tournament the following evening, they’d put it on the menu at the Casino Royale. Though she doubted anyone would ever know anything about Margaret Carter, 008, or her exploits while under the employ of SHIELD, maybe this little piece of her imagination would live on for years to come.

With such a flight of fancy rolling around her mind, she knew she must be far more tired than she felt. Carter signaled for her bill, signed it to the suite, and retired again to the quiet of the comfortable, though unfamiliar, bedroom. After changing out of her evening attire, she crept through the darkened bathroom and peered into Steve’s room and relaxed when she made out the sound of his even breathing and the sight of him asleep, flat on his back, under the heavy hotel duvet. She closed the door again, crossed back to her room, and crawled into bed, where she promptly fell into a deep sleep.

 


	5. The Man with the Crimson Complexion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we meet our villain, but mostly Peggy just wants to hit on anything in evening dress.

The first task of the day, Carter decided when she awoke at six on the morning of the poker game, was to order and consume a large breakfast of the highest quality available from the hotel’s room service. Without climbing out of bed, she put the phone to her ear and ordered blindly, accepting substitutions and suggestions to her order with grace. At the end of it, she was told her meal would arrive in forty-five minutes, and she thanked the concierge on the other end.

Carter went into the bathroom and paused a moment by Steve’s door, but it sounded like he was asleep. She stripped and showered quickly, first very hot and then very cold, and then went back to her room to make herself presentable for breakfast. She emerged just a quarter of an hour later, wearing a sun dress she’d owned since college—one of the few items of clothing in her wardrobe that was actually her own—and hotel slippers she’d found in the hall closet, and settled into a chair in the sitting room to wait. She had the local news on low, catching only the gist of a few foreign words from the anchors, as she didn’t feel like switching to the BBC and actually learning anything. Instead, she was reading over the rest of the information in that waterproof pouch she’d collected on their first day in Montenegro—the covers were fairly useless, but there was a new dossier on the Red Skull that had been updated since she’d last read it and, in case she needed it, an official, recent copy of the rules for Texas hold ‘em.

There came a knock at the door, and Carter checked that the small handgun was still securely holstered to her thigh, just a few inches above the hemline of her flouncy dress. She walked to the door, looked out the peephole into the hall, and called a greeting. There were two hotel men outside, a waiter with a rolling tray heaped with food, coffee, and a carafe of orange juice, and a bellhop carrying multiple garment bags. The waiter replied that he had her room service order, plus a special delivery, and Carter felt almost giddy as she opened the door to admit them.

Once the meal had been set up in the middle of the sitting room and the bags carefully laid out over the back of sofa, Carter tipped both men generously and saw them out. She desperately needed eggs and caffeine, but she tamped down her appetite long enough to open and examine the contents of the garment bags.

She had three gowns ready for the choosing: two subtle, one a bit more extravagant, all from a name designer. The fourth and final garment bag was, as she’d hoped, Steve’s brand new tuxedo, complete with vest, dress shirt, cummerbund, and a new set of silk handkerchiefs. She ran a hand over the material and smiled to herself, satisfied. She’d have to call H and thank him—he’d outdone himself.

There was another knock at the door. Carter waited, and the knock came again, the exact same tempo, no trace of insistence. After a moment, a piece of hotel stationary was slipped under the door, and Carter heard footsteps receding. She approached with caution and crouched to collect the paper, but shook her head at her silliness once she’d flipped it over.

> _English,_
> 
> _Meant to deliver the new duds myself (at our pal H’s insistence) but the bellhop said he was going this way, anyway, and I’m a sucker for a man in uniform. Can’t wait to see you in that red number around 1930._
> 
> _(This message will self-destruct, etc. etc.)_
> 
> _Ang._

Carter left the note on the breakfast cart and, at last, collected a plate of eggs and a glass of juice to devour. When she was done with her first round, she poured herself a cup of coffee, took three pieces of buttered toast, and walked back through her bedroom to the balcony. She hadn’t had time to use it yet, though as a child, she’d always been the first one to run out and explore such wonders in strange new places. She’d poked her head out on their first evening, of course, to assess the risk of invasion, and finding it null (save someone rappelling down the side of the hotel, in full view of anyone who happened to be looking at the building), Carter had not thought to bother with it again

But she stepped through the sliding glass door in her bedroom now and settled into one of the wrought-iron chairs the hotel provided. The balcony ran from Carter’s room to Steve’s, and though it wasn’t very wide, there was plenty of room to walk about. And the view, beautiful from inside, was absolutely spectacular out here.

“Ms. Carter?”

Carter heard the inquiry and gauged it to be coming from within her bedroom. She glanced at the sliding door, which she’d left ajar to let in a warm breeze, and called, “Here, Mr. Rogers.”

He was bed-rumpled and still looked absolutely exhausted, but Carter had to admit she preferred him as he was now to whenever he’d attempted to dress himself up thus far. Steve wore long flannel pants and a t-shirt emblazoned with the word “ARMY,” and nothing on his feet. He shielded his eyes from the sun and stepped out onto the balcony, mustering a smile of greeting.

“I thought you sprung from the womb in Dolce,” he quipped, indicating her casual attire and dragging a chair over from his part of the balcony to sit beside her.

“Ghost of civilian life past,” Carter replied. “Toast?”

“Coffee?”

“Inside.”

“Toast is closer. Thanks.”

They ate in silence for a moment, absorbing the mountains and the utter silence of being so high above a quiet country town. At last, Carter looked back at Steve’s shirt and said, “Were you really?”

He followed her eyes. “Oh, yeah, the army thing. For awhile—I did the service in exchange for college, thing, but I almost stayed in. I met a lot of good people.” He smiled self-deprecatingly. “There aren’t many ways for a poor orphan from Brooklyn to make something of himself.”

“Why’d you leave?”

Steve looked away, studying the mountains. He stood and walked to the waist-high stone wall that ran around the edge of the balcony, leaning a little over the side. “What a place, huh?”

 _Fair enough_. Carter had spent most of the last twenty-four hours neatly sidestepping Steve’s inquiries, so she decided that he, too, was entitled to his privacy. If it became pertinent, she could always beat it out of him later.

“I’m going back inside for some coffee,” she said gently, sensing that she'd need to proceed with caution. “Need anything?”

Steve glanced at her and smirked. “By my assessment on the train, you shouldn’t be a coffee person.”

Carter grinned. “We all have our vices.”

While Carter was inside, pouring coffee and considering another piece of toast and some fried ham, she heard Steve come back into the suite and watched him cross the sitting room back to his own room. The sliding door that allowed him balcony access opened and shut, and Carter assumed he had just wanted to unlock his own door. With a buffet plate of breakfast foods balanced on her arm and a cup of coffee in each hand, she went back to the balcony and found Steve back in the wrought-iron chair, now with a sketchpad open on his lap.

“Bacon?” she offered, and Steve took his coffee and a slice from the proffered plate. Carter noted that he was sketching the mountains, though it seemed like the pad was well-loved and much-used, most of the pages smudged with graphite and pastels.

“I think the mountains will stand still long enough for you to take a photograph, if you like,” she teased.

He smiled at her as she sat beside him once more. “If art paid more, I wouldn’t be here. As it is, I keep it as a hobby.”

“There’s plenty you can do with those kinds of skills,” Carter argued. She looked again at the page. “Especially with your talent.”

“Well, thanks. This is just some chicken-scratch, really.” Steve paused, considering the landscape again. “I guess I just like having it all to myself. I wouldn't know what to do if someone actually wanted to display my art anywhere, or something like that. I can be selfish that way.”

Carter offered him the plate again and he selected a handful of grapes. She focused on a slice of melon for herself and sat in companionable silence in the sun beside her ex-army artist-cum-economist friend. If she were to close her eyes just now, Carter could pretend they were just two friends, splurging on a fancy vacation, or the couple in their cover story, dumb and in love and spending money like it would never run out.

But then reality came back, in the form of the cool gun at her thigh, warming in paradise’s sunshine, and with it came the memories of the Red Skull and the card game and the fate of the world resting on her designer-clad shoulders and unique set of skills. Overcome, Carter reached out and rested her hand on Steve’s arm, enjoying the movement of his muscles under the skin as he continued sketching without even a beat of hesitation.

“This is nice,” Steve said softly, and though he was looking between the page and the wide world beyond their balcony, Carter liked to think he meant this moment, right now and right here.

Once they’d devoured most of the breakfast cart, Steve retired to his room to prepare for the day, and Carter settled into one of the sitting room armchairs with the last glass of orange juice. Steve appeared in half an hour, freshly shaved and wearing a casual—though, Carter noted, expensive—polo and slacks. She selected a sweater and nice sandals to dress up the sundress, and then, they were off.

They spent most of the day out and about in Royale proper, wondering new streets and window-shopping. They stopped for lunch at a sidewalk café, then continued their stroll and conversation. The game wasn’t until nine, and Carter knew she should eat another substantial meal beforehand, but she didn’t exactly relish facing the Red Skull on a full stomach; it made her queasy just to think about it. So she and Steve wandered until the sun had begun to dip below some of the taller buildings (the casino, in particular), throwing shadows over the narrow streets.

They returned to the hotel around four, and Carter claimed the bathroom first. She showered again, then climbed out to apply far more makeup than she ever cared to wear, and spent some extra time styling her hair. Steve knocked on the bathroom door, just once, and before Carter could snipe that she needed more time to prepare to face off in a game of wits (and cards) with an international terrorist, he called that he’d ordered a small room service dinner, should she need it.

Carter was famished, and thanked him profusely for the foresight. “But I’m still going to be in here awhile,” she warned.

“Take your time, Madam Spy,” he replied easily.

Around six, Carter knocked on Steve’s bathroom door and announced that the space was his, and then crossed through her room and into the sitting room to see what kind of meal he’d ordered. Not long after, Steve joined her, wearing the same tuxedo from the evening before. At the sight of her, he stopped in his tracks and blinked.

Carter swallowed the large bite of roast rosemary chicken she’d just crammed into her mouth, and washed it down with half a glass of water. “I’m hoping you’re stunned by my beauty and not my atrocious eating habits,” she said.

Steve nodded dumbly. “You look incredible.”

That was the reaction Carter had been hoping for. The evening gown she wore was a bright, notice-me crimson, and the hem carried all the way to the floor, pooling in a short train behind her. Perhaps it was rude to wear a man’s signature color to his own poker tournament, but Carter didn’t think she’d hurt the Red Skull’s feelings too badly. And if she did, she didn't doubt he'd take it up with her in private. The gown had capped sleeves and a fairly modest—though still enticingly dangerous—neckline, and scooped down her back, showing off her shoulder blades. Her hair was down and expertly curled and tousled, and the shoes no one would see were shiny and gold. She felt more prepared for the evening than she’d thought she could possibly be—though Steve’s eyes on her were beginning to send her mind drifting off to other activities besides poker.

“Well, now you’re making me a little uncomfortable,” she said, to cover up the thrill she really felt. “Have some chicken.”

Apologetic, Steve joined her in standing around the coffee table—neither of them wanted to wrinkle their evening outfits—and remarked that their supposed "sitting room" had apparently been poorly named. He helped himself to some food and dug into the meal. Carter wiped her hands on a cloth napkin, and then held up a finger.

“I almost forgot…” She hurried to her room and retrieved the tuxedo she’d had H track down and fly out to her, and presented it to Steve with a flourish. He reached out a hand for it, and Carter jerked it away. “Perhaps after dinner. Do you like it?”

“It looks tailored,” Steve said, pulling his hand back as if he'd nearly touched some museum relic and not a Hugo Boss tux. “How could you possibly know my size?

Carter beamed. “Reading people, remember?”

“Are you a seamstress, too?”

“Hardly. We have specialists.” She presented it again. “But you’ll wear it?”

Steve set down his plate of chicken and potatoes and wiped his hands thoroughly, then carefully took the tux from Carter. “How could I not?”

“Now that I have you, I wanted to also go over a few ground rules. Sit, please.” Carter didn’t, though now that Steve had an alternate outfit, he took her up on the offer. Carter paced before the sitting room sofa, ticking off points by holding her fingers in the air as she mentioned them.

“I’ll be heading down to the private room soon enough, to get a better sense of who’ll be at the table. I recognized some of the names from the preliminary list SHIELD put together, but I’d like to see who will actually be playing and who's backed out, as well as taking the time to gauge the general mood of the room.

“Martinelli will be arriving there shortly, as well, so there’s no need for you to wait for her. Please, feel free to finish your dinner and take your time changing. I’d request that you appear at perhaps half-past nine. When you enter, please do so from behind me, and be sure to cause as much of a stir as possible—don't knock anything over or trip down the stairs, of course, but a few winks here and there wouldn't hurt. Your general physique should serve to distract at least half the players, and I think we’ll get the rest when you stroll up and casually kiss my neck.”

Steve’s cheeks flushed, just a bit. “The Red Skull knows the covers are for shit.”

“Yes, but, with any luck, this approach will serve to confuse him as to the true nature of our relationship. Plus, everyone else at the table will expect Ms. Galore and Mr. Bigg, not Carter and Rogers.” Carter paused and smiled vaguely. “Besides, it’ll be fun.” She turned to Steve, who was smiling back at her. She put out a hand. “Nine-thirty?”

“Sharp,” Steve agreed, shaking her hand. “Thanks for the get-up.”

“SHIELD takes care of its own.” She collected a gold clutch from the coffee table, and exited. It was nearly seven in the evening, two hours to game time; it was now or never.

Carter was the third player to arrive in the private gaming room below the main casino. A large man stood at the gilded door on the main casino floor, looking rather bored and turning away curious tourists. He didn’t ask for Carter’s credentials, so she assumed he’d been briefed on the names and photos of the evening’s participants and guests. He opened the door for her and she took her time descending to the game floor.

It was quieter here, and cooler. The massive amounts of chill air pumped into the main gambling room served only to cut the edge off the tepid atmosphere, but here, it felt as though one could freeze the inventory of an entire meat locker. Carter was satisfied with this; it would keep everyone on their toes.

She made straight for the bar along the left wall. The counter was a rich mahogany, edged in gold, and she stood a few inches from the cool metal to order her preferred martini. The damn thing would really need a name, sooner or later. She was toying with one, but it seemed a bit early to commit just yet.

She took her drink from the bartender and handed over a generous tip, then turned to study the rest of the room. On a raised platform at the center of the room, surrounded by a gilded rail, was the table. Ten seats, plus a spot for the dealer, had been arranged around the crisp green top. In addition to the stairway from which she had entered, Carter counted three additional exits: a service corridor for the waitstaff; a marked emergency exit across from the bar; and a second flight of stairs that must have led down from another part of the main casino floor, situated opposite the one from which Carter had emerged. The rest of the room followed the color scheme of the rest of the casino—reds, golds, silvers—and in addition to the stools at the bar, a few cocktail tables and chairs had been arranged for the guests to sit at to watch the drama unfold.

The room was far from capacity at the moment, boasting just five listless waiters, the bartender, a bar back, an unpleasant American woman that Carter recognized from the list of players, a tall man she knew from the same, and Carter herself. As Carter sipped and studied the room, a few more people trickled in—two more players and their guests, the American woman’s date, an additional waiter, et cetera. Despite the copious amounts of money floating in the room, it wasn’t the most fascinating crowd. But Carter had already seen that one of the players seemed distracted by his own personal matters and another had already had too much to drink, and, unless it was all an act, both cues would be helpful once the game commenced.

Martinelli entered a little while later. Carter watched her contact appreciatively, taking in the black cocktail dress and heels with the barest hint of a smile. Martinelli spotted her watching and threw an extra sashay into her step, for Carter, and for the benefit of the waiters as she strolled past. She kissed each of Carter’s cheeks in greeting.

“I should have had you serve as my distraction,” Carter noted. “I’m worried Mr. Rogers won’t be able to cause such a stir.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that one,” Martinelli replied. “Love the dress. What are you drinking?”

Martinelli turned up her nose at the martini and ordered a Jack and Coke instead, and she and Carter stood talking for nearly an hour. The room began to fill and the waiters snapped to attention, taking drink orders and delivering anything that was needed, slipping big tips into their spiffy white suit jackets.

Carter turned away from the room for just a moment to order another martini, and she sensed a change in the atmosphere; a hush fell over the assembled. She turned back and saw it immediately: _Monsieur le_ Red Skull had arrived, at last.

Carter, of course, had seen pictures of the man, but none of his mugshots or portraits had done the full width and breadth of his presence justice. Seeing the Red Skull in real life, especially when contrasted with the glittering, mild-mannered elite in the room, was nearly enough to stop one’s heart. He had suffered some defect in the womb, rendering his entire skull hairless and his skin a deep, violent scarlet, and he contrasted this with an entirely black ensemble—undershirt, vest, tuxedo, shined shoes, handkerchief, even the carnation in his lapel. He was a tall man, and athletic.

But perhaps the most unsettling thing about this man the world called Red Skull was his face. His deeply sunken cheeks and upturned, nearly nonexistent nose made it clear what had inspired the nickname. One could see the sharp, jutting cheekbones and high cranium just under his angry red flesh, and while the sight of him summoned up images of Shakespearean recitations and Halloween celebrations, there was nothing humorous or fun about this man. He could be theatrical, most assuredly, and he appreciated the drama of a slow, sickening kill. But he was not a man at which one turned up one’s nose. He was a businessman; a warmonger; a killer.

And Agent Carter had been tasked with taking him out.

 


	6. The Game is Afoot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The game begins, and Carter chases down a potential lead.

For the last half hour before the game was set to begin, most of the other players and guests ate, drank, and chatted, either with their companions or with their soon-to-be opponents. Carter met a very nice woman from Belgium who hoped to win a fair amount of money for a charity at home, but otherwise took up a spot in a quiet corner of the room and spoke almost exclusively to Martinelli. Across the space, though he was surrounded by armed bodyguards, the Red Skull sat alone at one of the tables and spoke to no one.

Fifteen minutes before nine o’clock, two men entered, one of them carrying an apparently heavy briefcase. These were representatives for the bank in Switzerland (a cliché, perhaps, but one based on a history of reliability and discretion) in which each of the players had deposited their ten million dollar buy-in. The man with the briefcase set it on the poker table and opened it to reveal a portable computer with a keypad, and the other man explained that each of them would now enter a password. At the conclusion of the game, the winner would enter this password and the account number of any account at any bank in the world, and their winnings would be immediately transferred.

“Miss…Carter?” the first man sang out, after consulting a list of names.

Carter raised her eyes inquisitively. So her cover had been blown entirely—it was a good thing she hadn’t introduced herself as Ms. Galore to the others in the room.

“Ms. Carter, if you’d be so kind,” the man continued, meeting her eyes and beckoning to the machine. “We’ll proceed in alphabetical order.”

Carter crossed to the platform and ascended, then leaned over the keypad. “Six digits?” she confirmed. The man nodded and she paused, smiled, then entered her code. The man shook her hand and wished her luck, and then called up the next player. As she walked back to rejoin Martinelli, Carter felt two sets of eyes on her back—one, she was sure, belonged to the Red Skull, and when she glanced over her shoulder, she caught a man—black, tall, young—across the room looking back. Instead of looking away, he gave her a subtle nod.

“Who’s that?” Martinelli asked. She’d caught the nod from the man, as well, apparently.

Carter picked up her drink. “I’ve no idea,” she replied, “and I don’t plan to dwell on it.” _Unless it becomes pertinent. Or unless he tries to kill me_. She kept that part to herself.

At last, the dealer appeared and called for the players to join him around the table. The group settled into their chairs—the Red Skull had seated himself directly to the left of the dealer, and Carter was just three spots away, directly across the table—and after a moment for instructions, distribution of chips, and queries as to the table’s readiness, the cards began to fly. Carter didn’t watch the dealing; she watched the Red Skull. And every now and again, the Red Skull glanced up at her, the same bemused smirk on his face. He was trying to make her feel like she was in trouble—and maybe she was, being this close to him. But Carter still didn’t doubt her poker abilities, and so stared back with quiet confidence, not rattled in the slightest.

They were a little over half an hour into play, and Carter had been winning. The Red Skull had opened the first round with a bet of fifty-thousand dollars, and Carter had eventually taken the pot, thanks to a full house. The Red Skull frowned as Carter dragged the chips towards her section of the table, and he came back stronger next time around, taking the money with a nearly impossible—based on the only semi-impressive cards the dealer had turned over—straight flush.

Carter was so embroiled in the cards that she almost missed Steve entering the room— _almost_. She noticed movement at the edge of her vision and let her eyes flicker to a group of players' guests who had turned their heads, and she then followed their gazes towards the stairs directly across from the table. Steve came down the last few steps, directly in Carter’s line of sight, and her breath caught. He looked devilishly, incredibly handsome in the new tuxedo, with his hair slicked back and a bit of stubble giving him enough of a rugged edge to keep it interesting. He wore a fresh flower in his lapel, and when he noticed Carter watching him, he taped it and grinned.

Steve came around the raised platform and, after a pause to gauge the action on the table, walked up and bent to trace his lips over the side of Carter’s neck. “Win big, babe,” he muttered into her hair, just loud enough for those flanking her to hear.

Carter sighed lightly. “I thought I told you to distract everyone else,” she said softly, smirking.

“I did. I just wanted to bother you, too.”

“Consider me bothered,” Carter whispered back, half-turning to give him a wink, and then she shooed him off to join Martinelli at the bar.

The game went on, uninterrupted, for three hours. With the exception of the American woman, whose pile of chips had already grown pitifully small, almost everyone at the table had played well and won a fair share of the day’s take. Carter didn’t want to count her chickens before they hatched, but she half-suspected she’d taken in the most money that day. When she hazarded glances at the Red Skull, the perturbed frown on his face told her that he must have come to the same conclusion, and he was far from pleased with the evening’s outcome.

One of the waiters approached the table around quarter past midnight. He waited until the round had ended—another victory for Carter—and then leaned over and whispered something to the dealer. The dealer, in turn, looked to the Red Skull, who glanced back with contempt.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the dealer announced, “The time is now just about twelve-fifteen in the morning. We have been playing for approximately three hours and fifteen minutes, and shall now take a short break—please meet back here in approximately forty-five minutes. Play will resume at one o’clock.”

The Red Skull’s frown deepened, and he motioned for an underling to collect his winnings as he hurried from the room. Carter, perplexed, took up her own chips and handed them over to the safekeeping of a casino employee, then joined Martinelli and Steve at the bar.

“He left in a hurry,” Steve noted. With a practiced ease, his arm looped around Carter’s waist, and she allowed herself to be pulled flush with his side.

“There are some bad—really bad—guys in town,” Martinelli explained. “I think they’re getting antsy.”

“The noose is tightening,” Carter said. “Good.” She turned back to the stairs, but the Red Skull was long gone. She wanted to know where he was, what he was up to, and who wanted him dead, aside from SHIELD. If she could manage it, she might be able to the list of terrorists SHIELD got to collar during this little escapade. And there was only one way to do that.

With a look, Carter told Martinelli to make herself scarce. Martinelli obliged, turning to the bartender and sliding down the counter to mingle with a few other guests. Now alone, Carter leaned close to Steve, laughing, and nipped his ear.

“You want to do _what_ to me?” she exclaimed, breathless, and then began tugging him toward the stairs.

“Excuse me?” Steve replied, dazed by the turn of events.

Carter stopped again, pulling Steve close, trying not to get too distracted by the way their bodies fit together. “Your character wants to get mine into bed, urgently,” she explained in a low voice. “We need to get up to our room, and _now_. Play along.”

“I’m still lost,” Steve said, sighing, but he followed Carter up the stairs and back to the elevator willingly enough.

“He’ll be in the best room, top floor, full suite,” Carter muttered, half to herself, as the elevator rose to the top of the hotel. She turned to Steve. “Sorry, I needed to throw off the goons that were still lingering around the poker table. Martinelli and I think the Red Skull’s little meeting right now might be with some pretty awful people—criminals whose money he lost, criminals who want their blood money back and aren’t willing to wait until Red Skull wins this game of his. If we can find him, and whoever’s threatening him, this could be the biggest arrest SHIELD has ever orchestrated.”

“Oh, good,” Steve said, working hard to keep jovial. “I was worried you just wanted to sleep with me.”

“Perhaps later,” Carter replied distractedly. She’d been typing furiously on her phone, and finally smiled. “2505,” she said. “I’m sure that’s him.” She showed the screen to Steve. “H hacked the hotel’s guest registry. The Red Skull’s under an assumed name, of course, but that's the best room in the house. I’m sure we’ve got him.”

The elevator dinged and the doors opened. Carter stepped out, then held out a hand to Steve. “I need you as backup,” she admitted, a bit sheepish.

Steve hesitated, but only for a moment. He stepped forward and took Carter’s hand, giving it a squeeze and then dropping it. “Just tell me you’re armed.”

“Always,” she replied, and strode purposefully down the hall towards 2505.

 


	7. The Stairwell

The hotel hallway was silent, thanks to relatively sturdy walls that seemed to keep all sounds or signs of life locked safely into their individual rooms. But as Carter approached 2505 with Steve at her back, the doorknob turned, the door opened, and a large bald man backed out of the room, flanked by what could only be described as henchmen.

“I didn’t like having to come all the way out here, Skull,” the man said. “I have a business to run myself. But if I don’t have a stack of hundred-dollar bills the height of Bobby here"—he indicated one of the men—"on my desk in Hell’s Kitchen by tomorrow at midnight, you’ll like me coming all the way out here a lot less.”

Carter wanted to listen in, but she also didn’t want to risk getting caught in the hall. The man in the doorway was Wilson Fisk, an American crime lord based out of New York City, and SHIELD had never been able to pin down enough evidence to bring him in. He had a network of guys willing to take a dive to protect the interests of their boss, and they were loyal as sin—not one of them had ever so much as squeaked about Fisk. This was a golden opportunity—here Fisk was, in no uncertain terms threatening Red Skull, most likely because the Red Skull had lost the money that Fisk had willingly handed over to have laundered. But Carter alone, even with Steve to help as best he could, couldn’t possibly take on Fisk and the two visible henchmen, plus Red Skull, plus whoever the Skull had in the room with him.

“ _Stairs_ ,” Carter hissed, and she and Steve pressed themselves to the wall and eased open the exit door. Before they could really get moving, Fisk and his men began moving down the hall. Without thinking, Carter caught Steve’s shoulders and pressed her lips to his. She felt him tense under the unprovoked display of affection, and then he softened into her grasp and returned as good as he got. Carter pushed aside the thrill of their first proper kiss—the first of many, she hoped, especially as she realized how perfect his lips felt—and opened one eye to watch Fisk’s progress toward the elevator.

As good as SHIELD was, they couldn’t keep all of their confidential information totally top secret. Fisk did a double take, narrowed his eyes, and said, “Carter.”

 _Shit_. Carter broke the kiss and shoved Steve toward the stairs. “ _Go._ ”

“Take care of this,” Carter heard Fisk order, and the henchmen took off after them. She could hear their clattering steps on the stairs overhead, coming closer, and Carter paused only a moment to kick off her heels and carry them in her hands. It was a risk to go into this barefoot, but she couldn’t run properly in her shoes, and she didn’t want to get herself—or Steve—killed because her heel got caught in a grate, or some other such nonsense. She also removed the gun from where it was strapped to her thigh, narrowed in on one of the men, and fired.

With the train of her dress clutched in one hand, Carter caught up to Steve, who had been half a flight below her and trying the door on every floor, only to find them locked from this side of the door. Carter moved faster without the shoes, so she hurried a little ahead of Steve and then stopped again to aim at their would-be assassins. The men were closing in fast, but with one deep inhalation, Carter fired, and one of the men crumpled to the stairs and tumbled down onto the landing, moaning. She’d hit his torso somewhere, enough to stop him for a moment. But his companion just glanced at him and kept moving after them.

At Carter's wave, Steve had run ahead, but stopped at the sound of the gunshot. He was an entire floor below, and looked back with concern. Carter motioned again for him to run. “Keep going,” she ordered.

“Look out!” he shouted back, just as the second henchman sprung his attack. He launched himself at Carter’s waist, trying to knock her off balance, and she took the full force of the hit in her stomach and slammed into the wall behind her. She dropped her heels and her gun and grappled with the man, landing a kidney punch and managing to throw him off. He came back, aiming for her head, but Carter ducked and scooped her shoes back up, and stabbed at him with the stiletto heel of one shoe. It hit home, digging through the flesh of his shoulder, and he cried out in pain.

Carter attacked again, catching his side with the heel of the other shoe, and then using the man’s attacking momentum to throw him down the stairs. He rolled to a stop on the landing, clutching his shoulder and side, but Carter gave him no time to recover—she dropped the shoes, hurried down the stairs, and, as the man rose to attack once more, flipped him over the balcony and sent him flying down to the ground floor.

“Christ!” Steve exclaimed, sounding far away.

Carter grabbed her gun and then her shoes, the heels of which had both been ruined by blood, and slumped against the banister. “It’s not me,” she called back wearily.

There came the sound of footsteps hurrying up the stairs, and Steve appeared. Without pausing, he hugged Carter to him with naked relief. She winced, but let him hold her for a beat, before gently extracting herself. She could still hear the other man moaning a few floors above; there wasn’t much time until someone came investigating.

“Take these,” Carter said calmly, pressing the shoes into Steve’s hands. “Find an exit and get back to our room and grab me some new shoes—bottom of my closet, I have a black pair on the right-hand side. I have to clean up as best I can here and then call Martinelli.” She grabbed his wrist to check his watch and cursed under her breath. “Not much time. I’ll work as fast as I can and meet you in the suite.”

“You’re bleeding,” Steve said, lightly touching the side of her head.

“Be careful,” Carter replied, gently urging Steve back down the stairs. “Head toward the ground floor and try each door until you can get out. It’s more of a hike, but I’m sure Fisk is waiting back upstairs.”

Steve nodded without another word and began jogging down the stairs. Carter caught her breath, and then climbed back up to where the first henchman had been felled by her bullet. She found him sprawled on a landing, dazed and bleeding, but alive. She cocked her gun and held it to his head; she had to change that.

When it was done, Carter dragged the body down to the ground floor. Thankfully, they’d run down far more stairs than she’d anticipated, and she was soon able to locate a large enough vent with a loose covering on the ground floor with relative ease. She stuffed both dead men into the vent and affixed the grate as best she could, then immediately placed a call to Martinelli. She explained the situation in clipped tones and apologized for not taking care of it herself.

“Don’t worry about it, English,” Martinelli replied with her same easy nature. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

Carter was glad for the long gown, as it covered her feet and hid the fact that she was barefoot as she stepped carefully through the lobby to the elevator banks. She’d dabbed the cut on her head as best she could with the inner hem of her dress, and kept her hands—bloody from the close combat—twirled into the folds of fabric. The man at the front desk was the same as the one who’d checked them in and smiled warmly when he saw her. She managed to wish him a good evening in a voice that didn’t shake, and then rode back upstairs to 1942.

Steve was waiting for her on the sitting room sofa, new shoes in hand, but Carter walked past him and made directly for the bathroom, pausing only to collect six tiny bottles of scotch from the minibar. She cracked open the first and downed it straight, then, lacking a proper first aid kit with rubbing alcohol, poured another over her knuckles as a disinfectant. She touched a washcloth soaked in the stuff to the cut on her forehead and winced, then went about washing herself down with soap and water and fixing her hair and makeup. She couldn’t look too banged up for her return to the poker table. She wanted Red Skull to know they’d run into Fisk and his goons, but she also wanted him to know that she’d bested them, and planned to do the same to him.

When she was done, Carter saw that she had ten minutes to spare, and downed another bottle of scotch. She returned to the sitting room, where Steve remained, the fresh shoes in his lap.

“Are you okay?” she asked gently, reaching for the shoes.

He handed them over and gave a weak laugh. “Am _I_ okay?”

“This is my job,” Carter replied, sitting down to pull on the shoes, “I’m used to this. But it’s still all very new to you. It may not seem like I understand that, but I do.” She took a deep breath. “For what it’s worth, Mr. Rogers, you’ve acted admirably since the very beginning.”

Steve managed to offer her his lopsided grin, though perhaps it wasn’t as genuine as it had been in previous days. “We have to head back down there, huh?”

Carter was silent for a moment, pondering it. She wanted nothing more than to kick off these stupid shoes, strip off this gown, and crawl into bed for twelve hours of blissful sleep. But she also knew that missing a round might mean allowing the Red Skull to earn back the money he’d lost. And now that she also knew that Wilson Fisk was in the country—in this _building_ —she couldn’t just let them continue on with their evil schemes uninhibited.

She nodded slowly. “We do. And tomorrow night. Tonight, rather. But then, it will be over.”

“And then?”

“And then we capture a very bad man.”

“And then?” Steve prompted.

Carter studied his earnest eyes, his hard jaw. “And then, we see,” she said cautiously. He seemed satisfied with this, and she was grateful.

They returned to the lobby and then down into the private room, where the other players had already gathered. Carter had already reminded Steve of their cover story, so they were both appropriately sly and sheepish, as if returning from quick tryst back in their shared suite, as she hurried to take her seat once more. She prayed that the cut on her forehead wouldn’t reopen too soon, and that no one would look too closely at her hands. She was also fairly certain she had a bruise blooming on her left shoulder blade, but there was nothing to be done about any of it. Instead, she murmured apologies at her late appearance, and then the dealer made his announcement about play beginning again and dealt the cards. Across the table, the Red Skull leveled his gaze at Carter, who slowly turned to meet his stare. He looked—or perhaps she was just projecting—tired, and also thoroughly displeased to see her sitting there, alive and well. Though he and Fisk clearly weren’t on the best terms, Fisk had undoubtedly mentioned sending his goons after her. Carter hoped the Red Skull could keep Fisk at bay until the whole thing was over, just long enough to let Carter win her millions and ruin the Skull for good.

After another three hours of play, the dealer declared that they were done for the night—or morning—and the players were dismissed. Carter had lost a few hands to the Red Skull and was glad for the break. As the cards were packed away and the chips collected, she leaned heavily on Steve’s proffered arm and found herself dreaming with her eyes open, moving mechanically toward the elevator and thinking only of her bed. She had been sent reeling, quite literally, off her game, but tomorrow, she knew, would be better.

 


	8. Double-Oh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which your author has no understanding of poisons, so she made it up as she went along.

Carter had planned to allow herself to sleep until early afternoon, which would still leave plenty of time to re-dress her wounds, make herself presentable in fresh eveningwear, and return to the poker table. But she found herself awake just after eight, the sun reaching into her bedroom under the heavy drapes that she’d pulled across the floor-to-ceiling windows and the sliding door that led to the balcony, and though she shut her eyes and willed herself to rest, her stubborn body refused to cooperate. She allowed herself a tiny moment of self-pity, then rolled out from under the duvet and hurried through a shower.

There came a knock at the door around ten, and Carter glanced out the peephole and wasn’t entirely surprised to see Martinelli standing there. She _was_ surprised, however, to see Martinelli’s getup: she’d gone full-blown tourist, in sensible shorts, sneakers, and a modest blouse, down to the purse that hung across her body to ward off would-be robbers, and the camera around her neck. In moderately priced dress slacks and a simple tank top, Carter wasn’t sure if she should feel over- or under-dressed.

The moment she entered the suite, Martinelli offered up a bag of some kind of local pastries and made a beeline to the sitting room phone to order a pot of coffee. Once that was done, Martinelli removed her purse and camera and perched on the edge of the sofa. Carter sat in the armchair beside her.

“Quite a mess you left me last night, English,” Martinelli chided, though she was grinning easily as she spoke. “And I so wanted to watch you wipe the floor with Red.”

“Bill Wilson Fisk for the overtime,” Carter replied. She helped herself to breakfast from the bag. “You found everything all right?”

Martinelli rolled her eyes. “You stopped short of leaving a direct blood trail, but I think the one guy left a dent in the concrete. Where’d he drop from?”

“Not high. If he’d been better trained, I suspect he may have survived.”

“Must’ve been the new guy in the office.” There was a knock on the door, and Martinelli sprang up to get it. She peeked out before opening, then allowed a waiter to come in and set the hot pot of coffee down on the coffee table, along with four fresh cups and saucers, a bowl of sugar, and a small pitcher of cream. Martinelli tipped him and saw him out, then returned and poured them both cups—black with a teaspoon of sugar for Carter, practically white with cream and without any sugar for herself.

“So how are you saving my ass this time?” Carter asked, settling into the well-upholstered armchair with a satisfied sigh.

“I could’ve just had the bodies dumped in the ocean, and we probably would’ve been safe,” Martinelli explained, “but I’m not as familiar with the Adriatic currents and I didn’t want to risk those two coming back to bite us. Burial in the mountains might’ve suited, but me and hiking?” She shook her head. “But I struck upon something brilliant around three in the morning…”

Martinelli’s phone rang. She answered in English, then rambled on in a language of Slavic origin, then said goodbye and hung up. She grinned. “My police deputy, thanking me for my help. Thanks to my tip, they’ve just discovered two dead bodies in the trunk of a Porsche in the hotel parking lot.”

Carter’s interest was piqued. “Whose Porsche?”

“Well, he usually lends it out to his most loyal cronies when he’s back in the States, but it’s registered to one Mr. Wilson Fisk.”

Carter beamed and put a hand over her heart. “God bless you, Angie Martinelli.”

“Don’t thank me, thank SHIELD for tapping into my inner domestic goddess. I have a thing for cleaning up,” Martinelli replied. “Now, what’s on the docket for this evening?”

The plan was much the same as the evening before—Carter, Martinelli, and Steve would arrive in the private room around eight, the game would begin at nine, and perhaps by the following morning, if the universe and her wits worked in tandem, Carter would have bankrupted the Red Skull. Martinelli seemed satisfied with this, and after half an hour of translating the local news for Carter over their coffee and light breakfast, the other agent gallivanted off to do whatever it was Martinelli normally did to fill her days in Eastern Europe.

Carter heard the shower start in the other room; Steve was awake. She toyed with the idea of taking a nap here in the armchair, though just knowing the sun was up had a bad habit of making it impossible for her to fully settle down during daylight hours. She decided to wait for Steve and see what his plans for the day were, but when nearly forty minutes had gone by without any sign of him emerging from the bathroom, Carter became slightly alarmed. She walked into her room and collected her gun from one of the bureau drawers, noticing that the door to the bathroom had been left open. Either Steve had become an exhibitionist overnight, or something was wrong.

Carter crept into the room, gun drawn. Thanks to the glass shower walls, she immediately spotted Steve, huddled under the spray in his army shirt and pajama pants. He even had socks on.

Carter set the gun down on the bathroom counter and walked into Steve’s line of sight. He didn’t look up at her. She eased the shower door open and crouched just out of the spray, the feet and the hems of her slacks resting in half an inch of water. She had the urge to pat Steve’s knee, to run her fingers over his hair, but she kept her hands to herself and waited.

“I killed people,” Steve said finally. “In the army. Not a lot and not outside of battles, or whatever. But it happened. And it was never like last night.”

Carter hung her head for a moment, feeling inexplicably ashamed of what she’d done, of what SHIELD had taught her to do in such a situation. Then, slowly, she turned and sat herself down beside Steve, her back to the same cool tile, her body under the same cool spray of water. “I’m sorry,” she said gently. “I didn’t think it would come to something like that. Or, if it did, it would be me and the Red Skull, alone. You shouldn’t have had to be a part of it.”

“How do you get the Double-Oh status?” Steve asked abruptly.

Carter put an arm over his shoulders and massaged the back of his skull with a deliberate hand. “I think you’ve worked that out,” she replied. “Are you cold?” Steve nodded, and rested his head on her shoulder as Carter reached up to tilt the dial into the red zone that meant hot water. They were both soaked through, so the temperature change didn’t do much, but Carter found it comforting.

Carter wasn’t sure how long they sat like that, but they barely spoke a word in all that time. Steve admitted that he hadn’t slept much the night before, and Carter doubted he’d slept at all. Finally, Steve reached up to shut the shower off and they both climbed out. The sun still shone out over a perfect day outside, but Carter felt like she could sleep another ten hours now, if she let herself. She handed Steve a fresh towel and gently urged him back into his own room, and retired to the armchair again. They passed their day catching up on sleep and fighting off demons.

Somehow, it was suddenly half past five, and Carter decided that she ought to get ready for the game. She skipped the shower and selected a strapless black number for the evening, making herself presentable. She ordered caviar and toast, because she thought they deserved to be a little extravagant, and was about to knock on Steve’s door and tell him he could skip coming down to the game when he appeared, fully dressed in his tuxedo and half-smiling.

“This is it,” he said, nodding resolutely.

“With luck,” Carter quipped, and grinned. “I’ve ordered caviar. Would you like something more substantial?”

He declined, and they settled in with minibar scotch on hotel rocks to await the meal. They didn’t speak, but it wasn’t uncomfortable, and it wasn’t the same as it had been in the shower earlier. There were still things Carter would have to explain—desperately wanted to explain, for the first time in her career—but there would be time enough for that. If Steve’s intuition was correct, this would be their last night in Montenegro, and all would be well.

They met Martinelli in the lobby at quarter to eight and Steve gallantly offered each lady an arm. They crossed the casino floor to the private door and descended into the frigid depths of the hotel, where the table, the players, and the Red Skull awaited them.

The game began on time, and Carter began with a flourish. After an hour and a half of play, she’d scooped up another two million, though most of the money belonged to others at the table beside the Red Skull. He was edgy tonight, and was clearly having a hard time keeping his impulses in check. He struggled with every decision to check, call, or fold, and seemed livid whenever he had to bow out to conserve his resources. His money was running out fast—both the ten million buy-in and the optional five he’d had to take—and it was making him even more dangerous than before. He wasn’t much of a threat at the table, at the moment, but he was going to cause problems outside the private room for whoever cost him his empire—namely, Carter.

Carter flagged down a waiter at a lull in the game and ordered her signature martini. Sweating, the man next to her ordered the same. Across the table, the young man who’d nodded at her the evening before asked for one, too, though he made a point to decline the twist of lemon. The Red Skull looked around at them, indignant.

“Is this cocktail hour, or are we going to continue with our tournament?” he demanded to know.

Carter gave him a winning smile. “By all means, Herr Skull, I will gladly continue to take your money. I am simply in need of refreshment.”

There were small chuckles around the table and the room, but the Red Skull narrowed his eyes at her. “We shall see, Ms. Carter,” he replied darkly. No one seemed to catch the look that passed between them, but Carter felt immediately as if someone had walked over her grave.

The dealer began the next round and the waiter returned with the drinks. Carter drained half of hers in one go and settled in to look at her cards. The bet came around to her and she tossed in her chips, and once her turn was over, she realized that her vision was going blurry. Her chest felt tight. She became aware of the sheen of sweat along her hairline and running down her neck. She reached for the martini, hoping to wet her throat, and finally noticed the Red Skull watching her intently, a small look of victory tugging at his sunken cheeks.

 _Bloody hell_. Had she really been stupid enough to fall for this?

The unpleasant American woman won the hand, and Carter signaled to the dealer. She could barely speak, but she must have already looked awful enough for the dealer to see that something was wrong and call for a half-hour break. The Red Skull watched Carter carefully, she noticed, as she stood from the table and hurried up the stairs, ignoring Steve and Martinelli’s confusion. _Not today, Red. Where’s the damn car parked?_

There was a first-aid kit in the Aston Martin in the parking lot, and Carter knew that a standard-issue kit from SHIELD included a catch-all antidote meant to combat basically every poisonous or venomous substance on the planet. Knowing Red Skull, this would be nothing run-of-the-mill, but the antidote might buy Carter enough time to get herself real help.

She pulled the car keys from her clutch and unlocked the doors, throwing herself into the passenger seat and digging into the glove compartment. She spilled the contents of the first-aid kit on the floor and noticed, for the first time, a defibrillator. _Might need that_. She collected everything into her lap, and that was when the car began speaking to her, though with N’s voice.

Through the haze of the poison, Carter realized it _was_ N, his voice pouring out of the speakers, which could apparently also double as some kind of emergency callbox, when danger had been sensed back at HQ. “Carter,” N said, his calm tone making Carter feel vaguely indignant, “you’re going to go into cardiac arrest very soon—you might have two minutes. But we still don’t know what Red Skull poisoned you with.”

Carter’s mind flashed to Jamaica, and the implant relaying her vital signs to the portable monitor, and she gave a weak chuckle. Perhaps the damn thing was actually good for something. She groped for the antidote bottle and syringe, and worked as quickly and carefully as possible to fill it.

“I’m administering the antidote,” she announced to the car.

“Good,” N replied. Carter thought she heard other voices, and imagined London HQ in a tizzy because 008’s vital signs had suddenly indicated that she was circling the drain. “Then you’re going to have to jump your heart. You’re gonna start feeling a little strange.”

Carter’s heart pounded, and she was sure she felt it skip a beat. “Strange isn’t even the half of it,” she replied, and hiked up her dress to jab the syringe into her thigh. That done, she unwound the cables from the defibrillator and shimmied out of her dress as best she could to affix the pads around her heart. No one had spoken in awhile, though she was sure she heard a buzzing in the car speakers that wasn’t white noise, but hurried discussion.

“I’m half-naked in a parking lot in Montenegro,” Carter told N—and whoever else was listening. “And dying. Some direction would be nice.”

“If you shock yourself and we’re wrong on the diagnosis, you’ll die,” N replied. “Hold on, Carter.”

The background voices rose a little, arguing. Carter pressed the charging button, and when the machine told her it was ready to work, she sat with her finger over the trigger, awaiting the signal of one of the brainiacs.

“Do it, Carter!” a new voice—H’s—shouted over the din. “Carter, hit the button.”

She felt weak. She was sure she’d said that to H, but she wasn’t sure if her mouth was responding to direction anymore. She slumped back into the passenger seat. N’s voice had joined the chorus, telling her to shock her heart now, or risk immediate death.

 _I can’t_.

“Carter!”

That voice sounded closer. Her eyes closed, and everything went dark.

 


	9. A Friend at the Table

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carter—SPOILER ALERT—survives her run-in with the nasty something-or-other in her drink, then teams with a familiar face to take on the Red Skull in the final few hands of the tournament.

Carter awoke slumped over in the passenger seat of the late-model Aston Martin. The glove compartment was still open and the first-aid kit was now on the pavement outside. The defibrillator had been removed, the cords neatly wound around the body of the machine, and her dress had been rearranged so that she had at least a bit of her dignity back. She was sweating profusely, but damn if she wasn’t alive.

“Carter? Er, Margaret?”

She opened her eyes and found Steve kneeling in the parking lot at her feet, just outside the passenger side door. When their eyes met, his mask of panic turned into unbridled relief.

“Peggy,” she corrected him weakly. “Nobody calls me Margaret.”

“She’s awake and talking,” Steve said to the air, ignoring her.

“You need to get to a hospital, Carter,” H said over the car speakers. “You hear me? Hospital.”

“I can’t,” Carter croaked, then cleared her throat. “I can’t. I have to finish the game.”

“You have to not be dead,” H retorted, and there was the sound of a small scuffle.

“Carter, get in there and finish the job,” N commanded. “And _then_ get your sorry ass to a hospital, or you’re out of the service.”

“Aye, captain,” Carter replied, saluting, though she was almost sure N couldn’t actually see her. The car’s central console flashed off and the background noise died away, leaving Carter and Steve truly alone in Montenegro.

“You need to get help, and now,” Steve insisted. “Forget what that man said. The other guy was right.”

“If I leave now, the Red Skull wins before I get back to challenge him,” Carter replied. She took two deep breaths, mentally measuring breathing rate and heartbeats per minute. She lifted her hands, stretched her fingers. She sat up and put some weight on her feet, and though the heels would be exhausting to walk in, she could do it. Everything seemed to be returning to normal.

“When I win,” she continued, and gave Steve a winning smile, “I promise to swoon dramatically and allow you to carry me to the nearest hospital.”

Steve’s shoulders sagged, but he smiled wryly back at her. “Fine, Peg. Here.” He helped her out of the car, then took the keys to close and lock up everything.

Carter readjusted her dress. “And if you call me Peg again, I’ll kill you.”

Steve offered his arm wordlessly, as if threats to his life were a common occurrence, and they strolled casually back toward the casino. The night air helped to clear Carter’s head, and the air conditioning inside helped some of the sweat evaporate. She dodged quickly into the lobby bathroom to clean up as best she could, then directed Steve to the main casino bar to order a glass of water. She drained three in rapid succession, as she hadn’t wanted to show that kind of weakness in front of the Red Skull, and then they descended into the pit once more.

The dealer was just calling for the players to return to their seats. Carter turned to Steve. “Bring me a new martini in half an hour. Watch the bartender carefully. Don’t let the drink out of your sight. If anything seems strange, pay for it and dump it— _discreetly_. Sneak me some water in a martini glass when the first drink is empty. I’m parched.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Martinelli was still by the bar, letting one of the other guests chat her up but keeping her eyes on Red Skull across the room. She glanced up and noticed Carter, and seemed to make a Herculean effort not to run over and demand to know what had happened.

“And tell Martinelli I’m fine,” Carter added, then pecked Steve on the cheek and patted his elbow. “Thank you.”

“Break legs,” Steve replied.

“After,” Carter promised, and moved away.

The other nine players took their seats, but Carter waited until the last moment to swan up to the platform and make a show of settling back into her spot across from the Red Skull. If he hadn't already been crimson, she guessed, he would be now—with fury.

“Ready for round two, Red?” Carter quipped.

The Red Skull’s jaw tightened. “So it would seem, Ms. Carter.”

They began. The Red Skull took the first hand, then an Australian man who hadn’t been much of a threat throughout the tournament, then Carter, then the Red Skull again. Then again. Then again. Somehow, the tide had turned, and Carter—and the other players—found herself floundering against the Red Skull’s seemingly indomitable poker skills. Carter was well-versed in the ways a person might cheat at the Texas hold ‘em table, and Red Skull definitely wasn’t cheating. He was desperate, and perhaps betting a bit recklessly, but he had kept his wits about him enough to begin raking in millions of dollars with each hand. At this rate, Carter would be cleaned out in a matter of hours, and the Red Skull would be able to pay his debts and escape into the shadows once more.

Carter couldn’t allow that to happen.

They broke for one full hour, and Carter noted that many of the players had left to make phone calls to their banks. Almost everybody needed more money to stay in the game—that five million sitting in Steve’s attaché case was looking mighty fine right about now.

Carter stood and indicated for Steve to follow her upstairs. They adjourned to the hotel’s terrace and found a quiet corner, away from the casino attendees, in which to talk. “I need the money,” Carter said. “I’m almost out and I can’t quit now.”

Steve’s face blanched. “I’m only supposed to give you that cash if I think it’s wise. Ms. Carter—Margaret—” He sighed. “It isn’t wise. I can’t gamble with the IMF’s money like that.”

Carter froze. “Excuse me?”

“You’re losing. You will continue to lose.”

“Absolutely not. I won’t allow it.”

“You almost _died_ for this.”

“I almost die on every mission,” Carter spat, then lowered her voice. “I almost die every _day_. So do you. It’s called life. And what little of it we get should be spent doing what we can to improve it.”

“You’re not making sense…” Steve tried weakly.

“Perhaps not,” Carter conceded. “I need that money, though, Steve. If you give it to me, I can win it back, all of it. I can bankrupt the Red Skull and have him out of the world for good.”

He couldn’t bring himself to say no again; Steve just shook his head.

“Damn you,” Carter exploded, stopping just short of breaking his nose. She gripped his arm instead, and despite the muscle beneath the tux, Steve winced. “You don’t understand what we do—what I do—and you don’t understand what this means.”

Steve’s eyes went cold; she’d insulted his intelligence, and Carter didn’t care. “Let go of me, Ms. Carter,” he said firmly.

“God damn your ignorance,” Carter said, but released him and stormed inside. At the main casino bar, she barked that she wanted a martini, and the man didn’t make it right, but she didn’t care. She drained it in one go and set it down, waving the bartender away when he asked if she wanted a refill. Instead, Carter glanced down the bar, and noticed that a man and woman were just finishing full meals there—they both had big, bloody steaks as entrees, each accompanied by a large, serrated steak knife.

Carter flagged down the bartender and asked for water, then drained it, signed for her drink, and moved down the counter. As she passed the dining couple, she palmed the man’s steak knife and moved off.

She was out of funds. She had nearly died. She had nothing to lose. The Red Skull might still have a bad run, or someone might actually step up and give him a real challenge. His colleagues could return early to collect their debts, as Fisk had, and they could decide they were tired of him playing games for their money.

But he could also win tonight, win it all and pay them all back on time. The Red Skull could, conceivably, survive the night and live to ruin the lives of thousands—even millions—more people.

Or Carter could kill him, here and now. She could stroll back down to the table and lodge a knife in his heart, and just pray that she had enough time before one of Red’s thugs or casino security arrived to cart her off—or kill her—to make sure the job was done. She needed him to bleed, to die savagely. She needed him gone, and she needed it to be painful. And if Steve refused to do his one damn job and give her the money to beat Red Skull at cards, then she was going to fall back on her SHIELD training and wipe the Red Skull off the face of the planet.

She didn’t realize she was being quite so obvious with her righteous fury until she vaguely noted that people were dodging out of her path. Carter didn’t care—let them look back on this night, once the deed was done and the news had broken, and say to their friends, “We had a perfectly lovely time in Royale—we saw the mountains and the sea and a real, live assassin!”

A hand caught her elbow, halting her momentum abruptly, and Carter looked up into the face of the man who had caught her eye and nodded knowingly the evening before. “Take it easy, there, pal,” he said. “Carter, right?”

“I have to get back to the table,” she replied, trying to sound as much like a human being as possible. In her current state of mind, it wasn't easy. “Excuse me, please.”

“Nuh-uh, bad idea,” the man replied, and reached over to pluck the knife from her other hand. He slipped it into the pocket of his tux. “I know you’re in a bad place, but I can help you out.”

Carter replied through gritted teeth, “I’m still armed.”

“Yeah, but you won’t open fire in a crowded casino—or even down at the high-rolling poker tournament.” His grin was wide, genuine, and would have been infectious, had Carter not wanted so badly to throttle him. “You and me, we’re practically related, Agent Carter. Brothers-in-arms.” He released her arm and offered his right hand. “Sam Wilson. I work for a little place called the Central Intelligence Agency.”

Carter couldn’t hide the bare shock from registering on her face. Once she’d recovered, she indicated the bar behind her. “We have a bit of time. Buy you a drink?”

“Thought you’d never ask.”

They took seats at as quiet a corner of the bar as they were going to find in the crowded place, and Carter was glad another bartender was set to handle this end of the counter and not the one she'd been so short with earlier. She didn’t relish being recognized—she also couldn’t quite remember if she’d left him a tip, and for some reason, that made her feel guiltier than anything else she’d done since arriving in Montenegro, including the double homicide of her would-be assassins the night before.

Once she and Sam had been settled with matching scotch and sodas, Carter opened the conversation. “So America finally admitted that the Red Skull was as big a threat to them as he is to Europe.”

“Hey, hey, nobody said anything about putting out a press release,” Sam replied easily. “But I was in the area, and I’m not a bad card player, so my higher-ups thought it might be smart to have someone representing Lady Liberty’s interests at the table.”

“You are a bad card player, though,” Carter said, and smirked.

Sam shook his head. “Yeah, I know. But I’m the best in my office, so here I am.” He lowered his voice. “And that’s where I think I can help you. I’m bleeding chips; you saw it. And Red Skull’s had an incredible turn of luck.”

Carter bit her tongue on her usual quip about luck having nothing to do with it. She didn’t think it did, but she was getting tired of having to explain it to everyone around her. “I’m out of cash, too,” she admitted. “Once whatever I have on the table’s gone, I’m done for.”

“You can beat him,” Sam said. “You haven’t done the additional five yet?”

Carter shook her head. “And I can't now. You?”

“I wanted to dip into it, press my luck. But apparently, you put in the whole five or nothing at all. I’m not playing well enough to warrant that. But you…” Sam shrugged. “If the Skull hadn’t messed with your game, you’d still be top cat at the table.”

Carter glanced at him and admitted nothing.

“I know a fast-acting poison when I see it,” Sam stage-whispered. He winked and took a long swallow of scotch. “Anyway, he’s desperate. He has been since the beginning. But now that he’s so close to wiping the floor with all of us, maybe he’s loosening up a bit. Maybe we can trip him up. Or you can.”

“How?” Carter asked.

“I give you my five mil,” Sam explained, “courtesy of the U.S. Treasury. You kick Red Skull’s ass and collect the winnings. My government will ask for just the ten millon buy-in back and you keep the rest.” Sam sat back and smiled. “Oh, and the CIA gets the collar. We bring in the Red Skull and get the credit, though we’ll absolutely agree to some kind of international tribunal. He’s a global criminal and he should answer for all of his crimes, regardless of borders.”

Carter did the math. If she won, she’d owe a total of twenty million American dollars to two major institutions—ten million back to the IMF and ten to the U.S. Treasury Department. There were ten players, and each put in at least ten million to play, if not digging into their optional, additional five. That was one hundred million dollars at the minimum, eighty once the debts were square.

Not that it was about the money—of course not. Carter nodded and shook Sam’s hand. “You have a deal, Mr. Wilson. I think my people would prefer it if my name were kept out of the records, anyway.”

Sam smiled. “Mine, too. The talking heads will get all the glory. But that’s what it’s all about, right?”

They took their time finishing their drinks, and though Carter reached for the bill, Sam gallantly paid for both with what he joked was the last of the spending money the American government had allowed him. Then, he excused himself to place a call to his banker. When he returned, he flashed Carter a thumbs-up. “We’re all set. My ego won’t let me bow out, but I’ll play it fast and loose and give you one less competitor in the next round or two. Maybe we can knock out a few more, have an old-fashioned Western showdown, just you and the Red Skull.”

“What fun,” Carter remarked drily, then put on an awful American southwestern drawl. “Shall we return to the table, pardner?”

“Never do that again,” Sam replied, but offered her his arm.

Back downstairs, Carter hesitated to introduce her new ally to Steve and Martinelli, if only for fear of blowing his cover. Sam caught a whiff of her anxiety and graciously made his exit. As he leaned in to kiss her cheek, he said quietly, “I’ll think of you when I lock him up and throw away the key.”

“And I you,” Carter whispered back, “as I spend my eighty mil.”

Laughing, Sam wandered off toward the bar. Carter followed, meeting back up with Steve and Martinelli at a table in the corner of the room. “Feeling better?” Martinelli asked, and handed her a glass of water.

“Splendid,” Carter replied, and was gratified to hear that she sounded like it. “It seems I have a secret admirer.”

Her companions looked at her quizzically, but then the dealer returned to the table, flanked by two casino employees, and began stacking chips back at their proper places. Carter’s, she noted with satisfaction, had grown by exactly five flat, red rectangles, each one representing one million dollars.

“You sly dog,” Martinelli said, grinning, and then beckoned Carter closer. “Did you sleep with that guy you walked in with? You can tell me. It’s for my report.”

Carter laughed. “Unfortunately not—he’s just a friend. And a generous one.”

“God bless him,” Martinelli said.

Steve’s face, in turn, had darkened. “You’re being ridiculous. This isn’t going to work. Why the hell can’t your people send in the cavalry already, instead of letting you play with innocent people’s money?”

Carter glanced at the table, judging how much time she had, then took a seat beside Steve. “Because we are the cavalry, darling,” she said, her voice low and dangerous. “This is the world I operate in. We are the last resort. We do what we must to ensure the mission is a success.” The dealer’s voice rang out, and Carter stood again. “Now, watch me do my job.”

As he'd predicted, Sam was out in two hands. But so were three of the other players, their chips wiped out for good. The time was just about three in the morning, and it quickly became a tug of war for dominance between Carter and the Red Skull. After another forty minutes of game play, it came down to, as Sam had hoped, a good, old-fashioned showdown, the Red Skull versus Agent Carter.

The Red Skull flipped his cards first, with a bit of a haughty flourish, to reveal a standard straight. Carter shook her head slowly, and felt the room tense. She could feel Red Skull’s glee, as he misinterpreted her shake of the head for a sign of defeat.

She had a royal flush.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started working on the second-to-last chapter of this story today. Just, you know, in case you were curious.


	10. Dire Straits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wins and losses abound.

Carter didn’t remember much of what had happened once the tournament had come to an official end. She had responded to the gasps of surprise and exclamations of congratulations with grace, nodding her head and shaking hands, demurring that it was only luck that had gotten her so far. There were offers for business deals and consulting contracts, talk of private suites and sun-drenched, sprawling homes in exotic locales, and invitations to well-stocked bars and exclusive clubs. She took every card offered and made mental note of names, faces, companies, and phone numbers, without any real intention of speaking to any of them ever again. They were good contacts to have for future missions—or when looking for suspects on future cases—and she would write them all up in her report for N.

She declined several invitations to parties and, instead, beckoned for Martinelli and Steve to join her at the bar. They were closing up shop, the bartender noted, but then winked and said he could allow an extra round for the winner. The room cleared quickly after the initial moments of jubilation. Carter noticed, in particular, that the Red Skull and his small army of guards had been the first to leave.

After their celebratory final sound, Martinelli mentioned casually that N had given her a buzz during the game, and he’d arranged for a SHIELD contact to meet them in the lobby.

Carter groaned. “No more adventuring, please. I just want to drink myself silly and sleep.”

“That poison made you loopy,” Martinelli replied. “Come on, you’ll like this guy.”

And Carter did—he was an American doctor with a good head on his shoulders and the ability to keep his mouth shut. He introduced himself as Bruce and then said no more, running through a checklist of Carter’s vital signs in a matter of minutes. He gave her a shot of something—he didn’t explain it and Carter didn’t much care, so she didn’t ask. She assumed it was another booster of the antidote, though she made sure to repeat that she felt fine, just thirsty.

“I know you’ll want to celebrate,” Doctor Bruce said, “but try to chug a gallon of water before going anywhere. I’m about ninety-nine-and-a-half-percent sure you’re fine, but the antidote and water will flush whatever’s left out of your system. Alcohol thins the blood and might kick whatever remnants of the poison are left back into high gear.”

“Thank you, Doctor.” Carter would gladly consume her weight in water, but she had no intention of depriving herself of a celebratory martini.

The doctor left them to it, and Carter spent an hour with a cool pitcher of water, which she refilled three times in the bathroom, and a tiny bottle of vodka she’d snuck down her dress so Steve and Martinelli wouldn’t take it away. The way she saw it, she'd earned it. It was after four in the morning, nearing dawn, and the sky was at its darkest. Carter got the impression that most of the casino had settled in for the evening, and it was strange to be awake when even the diehards had probably turned in for the night.

The VIP dinner club on the penthouse level was locked up for the night and the main bars on the casino floor would be shutting down, but the hotel had a smaller club on the second floor that was open until seven in the morning, flanked only by conference rooms and workspaces that were empty until the businesspeople descended at eight. Carter chose to lead them there for a nightcap. They entered a dimly-lit place, the walls running with neon lights and strings of Christmas bulbs, artfully arranged, and though dance music pumped through the speakers, there were only perhaps two dozen guests in the place, and only three of them seemed intent on continuing to dance.

Carter inquired about a quiet booth and flashed two one-hundred Euro notes. The bartended responded eagerly, having a waiter walk them over to a semi-circular table tucked into an alcove that blocked some of the noise. They ordered a round of drinks and Carter used her most sultry voice to order a basket of french fries. The kitchen was closed, but the waiter winked and said he’d do what he could.

Once everything had arrived, Carter let her companions talk while she pondered her martini. It was perfect, completely transparent. Anyone to look at it might assume it was something benign, when it was actually a careful combination of liquors. It was delicious—and dangerous.

“This still needs a name,” she announced at a lull in the conversation. They were all tired, and the witty banter of past days had all but evaporated. Martinelli had basically sprawled out across the booth, as if to take a nap, and Steve yawned mightily and turned bleary eyes on Carter at the sound of her voice.

“Name it after yourself,” Martinelli suggested, and shrugged. “Call it: ‘The Richest Woman in the World.’”

“I’m hardly that,” Carter replied demurely. “I’m not even in the top hundred, I’d say. Besides, that’s awfully egotistical.”

“You’re rich now; you’re allowed to be.”

“No. That’s not quite right.” Carter held the drink aloft, and then gestured to Steve, as if toasting him. “I’ve been thinking on it, and I think I finally have it—the Rogers.”

Martinelli grinned at Steve’s thunderstruck look. “I think that’s my cue,” she said, and leaned over to peck Steve on the cheek. She stood and came around the booth to hug Carter. “Play nice,” she whispered, wicked, and then traipsed from the club.

“Why the hell would you name a martini after me?” Steve asked once Martinelli had gone, though he didn’t sound vehement—merely perplexed.

“You’ve been with me since the beginning of all this,” Carter replied. She toasted him for real, and drained the glass dry. “I wouldn’t have been able to do it without you.”

Steve smiled, lopsided and sincere. “I didn’t give you the money,” he reminded her.

“I admire that. You have integrity.” She put a hand on Steve’s shoulder and squeezed. “We like your style, Mr. Rogers. You’ve got spunk. You’ll go far in this world.”

Steve leaned closer. “And what is it you’ve got, ma’am?”

“Charisma,” Carter replied, grinning. “An aura of danger. And legs that won’t quit.”

“You’ve got that right.” Steve closed the gap between them.

This kiss was better than the one in the hallway the night before, an organic reaction, a building upon the tiny touches and flourishes of the last three—had it really only been _three_?—days. Without the money to worry about, and without the specter of the Red Skull hanging over them, Carter felt that she could finally just let it all go. The anxiety that had lingered, noticed, though unacknowledged, at the back of her mind and in the pit of her stomach vanished with the first brush of Steve’s lips, the first gentle urging of his tongue against hers, and his hand on her thigh. She could focus on winning him now; that villa by the seaside seemed within reach.

Steve’s phone rang. He broke the kiss and reached for his pocket, but Carter caught his hand with one of hers and pressed herself closer. “Ignore it,” she breathed against his lips, and he did, for another thirty seconds. But when it chirped again, insistent, he heaved a sigh and pulled the phone from his pocket.

“It’s Martinelli,” he said, shaking his head. “She forgot to give us something for our departure.”

“Tell her it can wait. And since when are you two so chummy?”

“Jealous?” Steve smirked at her and tapped out a reply. The phone chirped almost immediately and he slid out of the booth. “She says it’s urgent—she’s going out of town tomorrow, early, and doesn’t want us stranded here. I’ll grab it and be right back.”

Carter sighed, but waved him off. As Steve left the club, she signaled the waiter for another drink and settled in to await it. Martinelli had said nothing about another mission—in fact, Carter was sure she remembered, through the exhausted haze, that Martinelli had only just mentioned that she planned to see more of the local police deputy, starting with a long stroll through Royale the next afternoon. “Brokering stronger international relations,” Martinelli had called it with a wink.

Carter cursed, slid out from behind the table, and sprinted through the club. She shouted her room number at the bartender and promised to return to pay for their drinks and food. How could Steve have not remembered? He’d been listening to Martinelli talk, giving her his full attention. Sure, he was tired, but so were they all—and even Carter had absorbed the information, though she’d been lost in her own nonsense thoughts while Martinelli was talking.

_Damn it, Steve_. She ran for the escalator down from the second floor to the lobby and hurried across the lobby and out into the night.

She spotted him walking along the curb, nearly in shadow, looking down at his phone and then glancing around in search of Martinelli. Carter sprinted after him, unhappy to attract the attention of the valet and the doorman, but she hadn’t wanted to call out and risk whoever had lured Steve outside making a move. Steve turned a corner and vanished from her view, and Carter put on an extra burst of speed.

Car tires squealed and a man—Steve, it was definitely Steve’s voice—shouted, and then other men were sniping at each other. Carter rounded the corner just in time to see three large men maneuver a fourth into the back of a sturdy four-door, and then hop in and speed off into the night. The fourth man had been in a Hugo Boss tux, a bag over his head—it had been Steve.

Carter didn’t hesitate. She made note of the license plate number on the car and then sprinted back to the hotel parking lot and dove for her car. It roared to life and took off with the slightest provocation, and the chase was on.

The other car was plain and black, not too old, but not a recent model—the epitome of nondescript. Carter sped through the narrow streets of Royale-les-Eaux in pursuit, just catching sight of the other car speeding out of town and onto the wider, winding roads of the countryside. She put on a burst of speed and followed, and the other car led her up into the foothills of the mountains within fifteen minutes. The roads were paved and well-maintained, but they must have followed old farming paths, as they looped and doubled back on themselves in easy arcs, unconcerned with the modern, high-speed modes of transit.

Carter lost sight of the other car around a few twists and turns, but felt confident they would remain on this main thoroughfare, so she continue speeding along, the odometer edging higher and higher. The car careened around a corner, and Carter only had a moment to see and process the image of Steve, bound and gagged, laid out neatly in the middle of the road. Carter pulled the wheel sharply to the left and took her foot off the accelerator, missing him completely. But her headlights swept over the overgrown grass and flowering bushes at the edge of the road, and her car plowed ahead. She slammed the brakes and felt the car skid across the grass, and then hit a particularly sturdy arrangement of natural foliage. Carter’s head smacked the steering wheel and the world disappeared for a moment.

When she woke up—the second time she’d lost time that day, she noted, and it was getting irksome—she was lying on the ground, staring up at a black sky. The scene had been illuminated by two sets of bright headlights, and three men stood over her. One held a gun. One was digging into her arm with a knife, leaving a messy, gaping wound. After a moment, he'd extracted the tracking device N had had implanted in her arm. The third was the Red Skull.

“Agent Carter,” the Red Skull said slowly, as if tasting the name. There was no hint of either malice or glee on his face or in his voice—in fact, he seemed bored. He accepted the device when the man with the knife offered it, examined it, and then ground it under the heel of his shoe.

“You could’ve just called if you wanted to set up a meeting,” Carter managed. She couldn’t see or hear any sign of Steve, but he’d flinched on the road, so unless she’d been out for days and something awful had happened in that time, he was most likely still alive, wherever he was.

In reply to her insolence, the Red Skull aimed a swift kick with heavy shoes at her side. Carter bit her lip to keep from crying out, but a whimper still leaked out.

“Better,” the Red Skull said, and smiled. He looked to the man with the gun and nodded. “Make haste. I want my money by morning.”

Carter allowed herself to be hauled to her feet and bound with thick ropes. Someone put a bag over her head and tossed her into a car—either the black one she’d been chasing or the other that had appeared on the road while she’d been unconscious—and they were off. Carter tried her best to count and keep track of direction and landmarks, but it was an impossibly quiet evening, just before dawn, and with the twisting road, there wasn’t much to go on. Finally, the car stopped and the engine died, and Carter heard the front two doors open, then the back. She was dragged roughly from the backseat.

“Keep them quiet,” the Red Skull ordered, and a swift punch to the side of the head knocked Carter out for the third time that day.

* * *

 Carter next woke when a bucket of ice cold water came crashing over her skull and torso. She opened her eyes and gasped, and found that the bag was still over her head. Her wrists and ankles were bound to a chair, and tightly, but aside from rope burn and a nasty headache, she felt all right.

The bag was removed and Carter was facing the Red Skull head-on. She sensed someone behind her, on guard. The Red Skull nodded a greeting, as if passing her at the country club, as if he weren't preparing some unknown pain in what appeared to be the bowels of a building marked for demolition. Pipes, rusted, ran overhead in all directions, and the walls had been graffitied with paint that seemed to go back twenty years. No one would be coming to investigate, no matter how loudly Carter screamed.

She wouldn’t give the Red Skull the satisfaction, anyway.

“You may go,” the Red Skull said to the men behind her, and then waited until they were alone to speak again. Once a door somewhere behind Carter had opened, shut, and locked, the Red Skull let a slow, garish smile spread over his crimson lips. “You’ve made things very difficult, Ms. Carter,” he began. “Very difficult, indeed.”

“That was the plan,” Carter rasped, and coughed. Her throat was dry, though the air was cool and moist, and the walls hung with mildew and mold.

“Be that as it may, luckily enough for me,” the Red Skull continued, “I thrive on a challenge. _Difficult_ , my dear Agent Carter, is not _impossible._ Now then.” He took a step closer, his hands clasped behind his back. “This is how this will be done: I will ask questions, and you will answer them. If I like your answers, I kill you quickly and give you a proper burial. If you upset me, I brutalize you to within an inch of your life, wait for you to wake, hurt you again, and then kill you as slowly as I can manage.”

Carter was silent, seemingly considering this. “No burial with the second option?” she asked innocently.

“Fed to my dogs, I think,” the Red Skull replied agreeably. “They are good that way, dogs. They’ll eat anything you grind up and throw in their dish.”

Without warning, the Red Skull reared back and slammed one solid, red fist into Carter’s nose. She felt the bone crack, with an almost satisfying split, and her eyes began to water.

“What is the account number to which you will be transferring your money?” the Red Skull asked, his voice calm, as he wiped blood from his knuckles with a black handkerchief.

Carter said nothing.

The Red Skull punched her left cheek. “What is the account number?”

Carter said nothing.

The Red Skull paused, then called out something in German, loud enough for a guard outside to hear. There was a shouted reply, and then silence. And then, through the crumbling walls, Carter heard Steve screaming.

“Steve!” she cried, hoping he’d hear and be able to hold on. But she hadn’t heard a man or woman make such sounds in many years—and the last time she’d heard it, she had been on the giving end.

The Red Skull punched her in the mouth as Steve’s screams rang in her ears. “The account number, Agent Carter.”

“I don’t know it,” Carter admitted, desperate. “I don’t know anything about the money. That’s not why they sent me.”

The Red Skull let the room fall quiet, the only sound Steve’s continuing shouts of pain. “I know. That’s why we made sure to collect Mr. Rogers, as well.”

He kicked her in the right shin, and Carter felt her kneecap shatter. Pain exploded in her leg and ran directly to her brain, lighting up every survival instinct she had. His boots had to be lined with something—steel, adamantium, lead. But she didn’t say another word.

And so the evening continued. The Red Skull’s ingenuity knew no bounds, and each time he asked about the account number or the password, and each time Carter refused to reply—save a few, ill-fated attempts to beg for Steve’s life—he found some new way to hurt her. When his fists grew tired, he used a rusty pipe. When he grew bored, he called in a guard to help.

Carter wasn’t sure how long it had been going on, but through the haze of pain, she managed to cling to a small glimmer of hope. The Red Skull hadn’t yet noticed that, over the course of his “interrogation,” she had managed to loosen the ropes on one wrist, nor had he yet seen that one of her feet was nearly free. If he kept this up, and if Carter could take it, she could get herself out of the chair and retaliate—not that she was sure what good any attack she made now would do. She would just have to bide her time and test the limit of the Red Skull’s cruelty.

He hit her again, and she let her entire body fall forward with a wheezing sigh, as if she’d fallen unconscious again. The Red Skull huffed, clearly irritated, and slapped her cheek lightly. When Carter didn’t seem to stir, he left the room, and Carter went to work on the remaining bonds. She didn’t have a watch and there was no clock in the room, but it wouldn’t matter what time it was, or how long she’d been there—all that mattered was getting free before the Skull or one of his henchmen returned.

Carter got her hand free, and spent a precious moment rolling her wrist to get the blood circulating again. Ignoring the urge to touch her bruised and bloodied face or check for broken ribs, she went to work on her other hand, and had it free with relative ease. The Red Skull’s assault had given her plenty of room to fling herself about, as if reacting to the hits, while actually serving to stretch and loosen the ropes around her extremities. Now, with both hands free, she made quick work of the one leg that was mostly free—it was the one with the broken kneecap, she noted with some displeasure—and then tried to undo the knots around the other ankle.

Carter heard Steve’s distant screams once more and grit her teeth. _I know_ , she said, meaning it for him. _I’m trying. I know._

The door to her room opened again. In Carter’s perfect world, she would have heard footsteps approaching first and had enough time to half-ass herself back into the ropes and take full advantage of the element of surprise. As it was, she was hunched over her left ankle as the Red Skull entered, accompanied by a guard carrying a metal bucket of what Carter assumed would be fresh, cold water. Both men stopped at the sight of her, and Carter glanced at them over her shoulder, her look almost apologetic.

“You’re early,” she rasped.

The Red Skull approached, and Carter forced herself to her feet, putting all her weight on the leg that, unfortunately, was still attached to the chair. But she managed to dodge three rapid hits, aimed at her face and shoulders, and ignored the pain singing across nearly every inch of her body to land a solid right hook to the Red Skull’s nose. It immediately started bleeding, and Carter thought, for a fleeting moment, that she could now die happy, as she’d given back at least one of the injuries he’d given her.

The henchman entered the fray, still holding the bucket. With one leg attached to an old wooden chair and the other unable to hold her weight, Carter couldn’t move around much. But she was able to hop across a small area, using the chair to steady herself as she ducked under punches and leapt over kicks. She landed a few good hits in return and held her own far longer than she’d expected, but her shining moment was getting shoved over by the goon, who held the water bucket menacingly over her. Then, when the Red Skull had leaned over to finish her, Carter kicked up with her leg good, cracking him over the back with both her foot and the chair, which splintered on impact. Now free, Carter hopped up and went for the henchman, who swung the bucket at her, sloshing water over the floor and missing her completely. She disarmed him and slammed the heavy metal bucket down over his head, then swung around and brought it down over the Red Skull’s crimson cranium, just seconds before he aimed a good kick at her remaining leg. Both men, at last, fell down, cold.

Using pieces of chair, rope, and strips of fabric from the henchman’s jacket, Carter fashioned herself a quick splint for her knee that at least made it possible for her to walk. She doubted it would ever heal correctly, even with all the miracles of modern medicine behind it, but she didn’t really care about that just now—she cared about finding Steve, and about getting them both out. She took the handgun from the holster at the henchman’s armpit and hurried, as best she could, from the room.

The hall appeared empty, and it was just as decrepit as the room she’d been held in. She limped in the general direction of Steve’s earlier screams—which, she noted, with a strange mix of relief and rising anxiety, had gone silent and been that way for some time—peeking into open doorways as she carefully crept past. She came upon one lone guard in the hall, but he had his back to her, so she was able to nab him quickly enough to get him into a sleeper hold without too much struggle or sound. Propping him against the wall, Carter carried on, until she found a closed door. Nearly every other one she’d walked past had been ajar, with little sign of use. She pressed her ear to the heavy door and couldn’t hear much, but she was sure she heard faint sounds of movement, maybe even speech. This had to be it.

The door was locked, so there was nothing Carter could do but wait. She pressed herself to the wall, just to the side of the door, and glanced up and down the hall to make sure no other guards approached. As far as she could tell, the three men she’d put down hadn’t yet risen—there certainly hadn’t been any sign of the Red Skull.

The faint steps behind the door sounded louder, and Carter inhaled sharply and prepared herself to attack. The door opened and chiding laughter drifted out—at least two distinct tones—and Carter glanced once, then pounced. She landed on top of the man who'd been first to exit, knocking the wind from his diaphragm, and aimed the gun at the second. The second man toppled with a bullet hole in his neck, and she then pressed the muzzle to the first guard’s head and pulled the trigger.

Carter looked up and spotted Steve immediately. He’d been beaten, but not as badly as she imagined she had been—or, at the very least, not quite as visibly. His tuxedo jacket and bowtie were gone, and sweat and blood stained his shirt. He had a black eye and a swollen cheek, and as Carter crept closer, so as not to startle him, she noticed the probable source of his earlier screams: each of his fingers appeared to have been dislocated, and six of the nails across both hands were missing. He was also barefoot, and though his toes looked okay, Carter noticed streaks of blood under his feet.

“Steve?” she said, and ran a gentle hand through his hair to wake him. “Open your eyes, Steve. We have to go. _Immediately_.”

He coughed, startling Carter, and then spat a tooth on the ground and exhaled heavily. With an obvious effort, Steve raised his head and focused on Carter. “…Peggy?”

“I’ll allow it,” she replied with a wan smile, and went to work on the bonds holding him to the chair. She lost her balance once, a combination of the shattered knee and exhaustion, and the room spun, but she sat heavily on the dirty floor and continued her steady work on the knots. When Steve was free, Carter came around and wrapped her arms around his torso, just under the arms, and told him, “I’ll need your help.”

“Let’s just sit,” Steve replied.

Carter rolled her eyes. “And you’re making jokes. Come along, Mr. Rogers.”

Together, they got Steve up and out of the chair, but Carter’s suspicions were confirmed when he took one small step forward and nearly collapsed in agony; he left bloody footprints in his wake, undoubtedly the result of some henchman's knife, torture that was the product of the Red Skull's hellish imagination.

Carter’s vision went blurry, then black, but faded slowly back to normal in a matter of seconds, and she pulled Steve’s arm over her shoulders. “Lean your weight on me, that’s it,” she directed, inching them forward. She was hunched nearly double under his weight (and her own pain), but she was fairly certain the goon in the hall would be waking up soon enough. And though she may have killed the men in her room, she very much doubted she’d seen the last of the Red Skull. Getting out was more important than resting just now—even if they were killed in the process.

They made it as far as the hall before they both toppled over. Carter felt something else shift in her bad knee and yelped, unable to help herself, and landed flat on the floor, sprawled on her stomach, panting. She still had the gun in her hand, luckily, and clicked the safety off. Steve kneeled on the ground beside her, blood running freely from his feet, his ruined fingers resting gingerly on his thighs.

“We’re going to get home, Agent Carter,” Steve said slowly, and Carter half-suspected he was saying it to convince himself.

“You most certainly are, Rogers,” a new voice—a voice Carter knew—said from the opposite end of the hall.

She rolled onto her back and leaned her head back far enough to see the top of N’s head, upside down, as he approached. He was flanked by two agents, with what sounded like more boots moving through the compound. It was a comforting sound—familiar boots on the ground meant your cavalry had arrived. It meant they’d made it. It meant Carter had won. _Mission accomplished. Stick that in your personnel file and smoke it._

“Lucky, aren’t we?” Carter whispered, smiling almost dreamily, and then darkness descended once more.

 


	11. Recuperation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which things are looking up, maybe!

There were flashes of light, of faces, of fading words and names, that collected in Carter’s mind as an unimaginable amount of time passed. She remembered waking once, fully and violently, and decking the orderly who tried to keep her on the bed, before a person in a white coat she desperately hoped was a doctor moved toward the IV bag attached to the back of her hand and injected something into the stream that let her fall back onto the mattress and into the void of a chemical-induced recuperative period. It was not bliss, because Carter felt hardly anything at all, but she would later look back on those moments of total darkness with a sort of grudging fondness. If this was the only way she’d get a vacation from SHIELD, she’d not complain; she’d enjoy it as best she could.

When next she woke, Carter felt sun on her face and her right arm. The daylight tinted her vision behind her eyelids in lovely warm shades of red and orange, and Carter felt strongly that she could just turn her head, settle back in, and gladly pull a Rumplestiltskin—twenty years of sleep didn’t sound so bad.

But, ever so slowly, she turned her head from the light and let her eyes open to the space. She took in, first, Martinelli’s thin frame curled into a wicker chair at Carter’s bedside, her nose buried in a hardcover book that looked to have been taken out of a public library. Carter squinted—the title was written in Czech, or perhaps Romanian. She wasn’t up on her Slavic languages.

The room around Martinelli was a strange mix of sterile hospital and chic country resort. The bed Carter rested on, for example, had sheets of a slightly higher quality than one might normally find in hospital, but there were still metal bars around the bed, and various types of equipment were situated around the head of the bed, keeping careful track of her breathing, heartbeat, brainwaves, and blood pressure.

Carter turned her head back and saw that the sun was streaming in through windows to her right, three total and edged with lacy curtains that looked old, yet well-maintained. The walls were seafoam green; there were flowers on a tasteful wicker table against the wall. There was also a low white bookshelf, stacked with discarded paperbacks, a few small forgotten items from patients past, and a stack of stationery with assorted writing instruments.

Carter drew in breath, and choked on her dry throat. Martinelli started at the sound, hit a call button at the bedside, and then hung over the metal rail to gingerly smooth back Carter’s hair from her face. “Hey, there,” she said softly. “Welcome back, English. You gonna stick around for awhile this time?”

“I won’t punch anyone, but otherwise, no promises,” Carter replied.

Martinelli grinned. “That happened a week ago. I can’t believe you remember.”

“A week?” Carter asked, dazed, but before Martinelli could explain in her matter-of-fact way, someone outside gave a perfunctory knock, and Dr. Bruce appeared in the doorway.

They were in the Italian lake country now, Bruce -- Dr. Banner, as he properly introduced himself now -- explain, having left Royale-les-Eaux far behind. Carter told herself she’d tasted the difference on the air the moment she’d awoken. Over the course of the conversation, it also came to light that Carter had been in a chemically-induced coma for a little over a week, and in dire straits for the week before that, since just after being brought in from the Red Skull’s hideout. Carter tried to interject to ask about the man, but Banner held up a hand to stop her.

“I can only answer for your medical prognosis, Ms. Carter,” he said, then indicated Martinelli. “Ask your friend here about anything else.”

Carter had three cracked ribs and a fairly serious fracture in her left cheekbone, though there had only been one small tear in her torso somewhere—she was beginning to fade by that point in the conversation and was only half-listening as she fought valiantly to keep sleep at bay—and some mild internal bleeding. They’d also treated her fully, albeit belatedly, for the poisoning, and there had been no adverse effects from that. Her knee had already been operated on while she was out, and looked better than it felt, but she would need another operation, perhaps two, or so the good doctor estimated. Most of the cuts and bruises were already well on their way to recovery, though Carter could expect to be sore for some months to come.

“You’ll walk,” Banner concluded, managing a smile for the grand finale. “It’ll be weeks, maybe months, but you’ll get there.”

Once Banner had gone, Carter tried her damnedest to ask Martinelli what she’d missed—the Red Skull and N and the money and Steve and Steve and _Steve_ —but she nodded off again, instead, until the following morning.

Martinelli had left at some point in the evening, but returned around lunch to make sure Carter sipped some juice and stayed awake long enough to hear the tale.

“They thought I’d actually done it, you know,” Martinelli began, rolling her eyes. “Texting Steve. Red sent the message from my phone, but remotely—I had the damn thing in my pocket the whole time, but Red and his goons hacked in. I got a new one, obviously.

“Anyway, I realized you were missing when I called the next morning to ask what I should wear to meet the deputy. We actually had to cut our date short, you know, because they got a lead on you and Rogers, and I wasn’t _not_ going to be there when they pulled you guys out of the pit. It took another day a half, and then we brought you both to the next closest city and the biggest ER we could find. Once you were stable—couple days—we moved you out here to Banner’s place. He’s a good egg, huh?

“Steve was all right, when it really came down to it. They did some nasty shit to him, but he’s a big guy, and tougher than the office job would let on. They had to set all his fingers, but doc says another week, tops, and he’ll be good to go. The cuts on his feet were torture, and there was some talk of nerve damage, but I think they got him sorted out pretty good. He’s hobbling around—and in these awful, nail salon-type plastic flip-flops—but at least he’s been up and about.”

Carter felt her shoulders sag with relief, and hadn’t realized how tense she’d been while Martinelli spoke. “He’s all right,” she sighed. She took Martinelli’s hand in hers and smiled. “And you are, too. I never thought it was you, if that helps.”

“N was just worried,” Martinelli replied, and shrugged, the same as Carter would have, had she found herself in her friend's shoes. Such moments of suspicion came with the clandestine territory. “Everyone got paranoid when you went missing. And when you slipped into the coma—well, we just wanted to make sure justice was done, no matter what the outcome.”

Carter ignored the thinly veiled allusion to her possible demise, and prompted instead, “The Red Skull?”

“Dead and burned up,” Martinelli replied. “We handed the body over to the CIA and they reported back to their feds that they’d done it in their rescue op to save Rogers. But we all know you did it.”

Carter shrugged; it hurt. “I wasn’t sure I’d finished him.”

“We may have helped,” Martinelli said. She pinched two fingers together. “A teeny bit. But it doesn’t really matter. He’s gone; that’s all. The end.”

Martinelli continued to visit for a few hours each day for another week. Now that Carter was awake and back to eating solids fairly steadily, visiting hours were more strictly enforced, though she was also allowed twenty minutes out in the expansive gardens of the hospital. In her mind, she’d taken to thinking of it as a place of convalescence, rather than serious medicine. Dr. Banner was more than equipped to perform delicate surgeries in his state-of-the-art operating theater (she’d asked to see it, as she was due for another round of slicing into her knee in another few months), but it was such a lovely, restful place, Carter couldn’t lump it into the same category as any general hospital she’d ever been in. It was a cluster of old villas and sprawling gardens, arranged along a lake edged on the far side with rolling hills, and it was just the sort of place Carter had hoped to find for herself and Steve once the mission was done.

 _Not quite what I had in mind_ , she thought to herself wryly, and tried not to think too negatively of the place because of that.

N stopped in to debrief her, if gently, and warned that he’d reappear for a full exit interview once she was able to eat an entire cup of pudding on her own. H called to ask if she wanted him to make her anything—some blinged-out crutches or a bionic leg, perhaps—and Carter had refused him on both counts, but thanked him profusely. Sam Wilson then appeared one afternoon, bearing a bouquet of flowers and the front page of the _New York Times_ from the day the Red Skull had been announced dead. The article called the CIA agents heroes, and Sam grimaced at that.

“You’re the hero,” he told her.

“We don’t get our names in the paper, remember?” Carter smiled, genuinely jovial just to see how the work she’d done had paid off.

“That one’s my boss,” Sam agreed, pointing to one of the pompous quotes, and it was the first time Carter had laughed at the hospital.

Carter woke one morning a full month into her recovery—one month from the Red Skull’s date of death—to find Steve already sitting in the wicker visitor’s chair, staring intently at her face, waiting. When she opened her eyes, he looked immediately away, as if glancing out the window to check the height of the sun, and then looked back. He leaned forward, smiled, stopped, and finally settled on some kind of grimace of sympathy.

“Jesus, you’re gorgeous,” Carter greeted him.

This seemed to catch Steve off-guard. But after a moment’s hesitation, his face broke into a genuine grin and he took her hand, wrapping one of his still-broken hands around her largely untouched one. Aside from a few minor cuts where her knuckles had connected with the faces of the Red Skull and his men, Carter's hands were basically the only parts of her that didn’t constantly radiate dull aches of pain. She lifted her other hand to pat his, and twined her fingers gingerly through his.

“Does it still hurt?” she asked, running her palm over his taped fingers.

Steve sighed, exasperated. "I wasn't in a coma for a week."

"Chemically induced," Carter replied. "Well, mostly. You're doing better?"

Steve seemed to see the wisdom in not arguing, and simply nodded. “The nail beds are still kind of tender. That skin hasn’t seen the light of day since the womb—where, I mean, I guess it didn’t see much light, either. But my fingers are basically straight again, which is nice. A couple of them are pretty much healed, and Dr. Banner says it just might just take some time for the stiffness to go away completely.” He glanced at her leg, elevated via a pulley mechanism hung from the ceiling, and shook his head. “What did he do to you?”

Carter followed his eye, and knew the “he” to whom Steve referred was not Bruce Banner. “Nothing you need to know and nothing I wish to relive,” she replied quietly, pushing away the leering face of the Red Skull that had risen up in her mind. She met Steve's eye and squeezed his hand a bit. “I am so sorry, Steve. You didn’t deserve to have this happen.”

“Neither did you.”

Carter considered arguing. But once she’d cleared away her typical “it’s my job” lines, she couldn’t think of a single reason why she might’ve actually deserved to find herself facing months of recuperation, recovery, and painful physical therapy. Yes, it was her job to put herself in the way of men like the Red Skull, and that often meant getting hurt. But when she saw the hurt in Steve’s eyes—his own, and the hurt he felt upon seeing her injured—the realization dawned upon her that she, too, was a human being, capable of human feeling, and she might actually like to lead a normal person’s life.

Recovery got tougher after that, though her progress, as almost every member of the medical staff made a point to note, was remarkable. Carter pushed herself harder than Banner, N, or even Steve seemed to want, but she didn’t care—she was tired of being helpless, and she was tired of being in the hospital. She insisted on being allowed out for a few hours each day, and Banner agreed, so long as Carter would only walk for twenty minutes max, and only with her crutches.

Steve appeared most mornings around ten, though sometimes he popped up after lunch, if he’d had his own meetings and appointments to attend to, and he was always up for whatever Carter wanted to do. At first, when they went for walks along the grounds, an orderly had lingered at the edges of the bubble of privacy Carter had set for Steve and herself with a fierce glance. The orderly would trail behind, slowly pushing a wheelchair in their wake and counting the minutes until he’d have to tell Carter to sit down. Finally, once Steve had proven himself a strict timekeeper and had insisted he didn’t mind, he’d been allowed to wheel her back and forth through the gardens unchaperoned, only stopping now and again to flex the fingers that had reknitted or to change the tape on his splints.

Sometimes, if physical therapy had been particularly brutal or Carter had secretly taken a few laps before Steve’s arrival, they just sat out on the wooden lounge chairs arranged outside the buildings nearest the lakes, Carter’s leg propped up on a couple of standard clinic pillows. She liked changing the bandages on Steve’s fingers, gently dabbing bacitracin on the ruined nails, if only because she liked feeling like she was helping him heal. In some small way, she was giving back at least a percentage of all the work he’d put into her recovery, and she liked not feeling beholden to him.

On one such day, after another month of the same recuperation routine, Carter was waiting outside on her preferred lounge chair for Steve to join her. Martinelli had brought her a pair of chic sunglasses, which she now had on, and Carter leaned her head back and closed her eyes. When she’d left her room earlier that morning, she’d managed to bring one of her pillows along with her. It hadn’t been easy, getting herself around to the chairs on crutches with a pillow tucked clumsily under one arm, but she’d done it.

Steve appeared around the building and took up his seat to her left. “Banner will kill you for being up and about so much,” he chided, though lightly. “It would be a shame for you to die now, so close to being let out.” When Carter didn’t respond, Steve plucked the sunglasses off her eyes with a weary sigh. “Please stop pretending to be asleep when I’m trying to scold you.”

Carter caught his wrist and used it to shield her eyes from the bright morning sun. “Don’t be rude, I’m convalescing,” she replied, and plucked the glasses from his fingers. She released his wrist and perched the sunglasses on her head, and smiled. “Good morning.”

Steve stood and helped her move over a bit on the lounge chair, then sat on the edge and smiled down at her. “Morning. Feeling better?”

“I walked all the way to the rose garden and back.”

“And then all the way over here?” Steve whistled, impressed, despite himself. “Doc says you’re a wonder of modern medicine. But he says it in such a way as to make it clear you still shouldn’t be doing so much.”

“I only take orders from N,” Carter replied.

“They’re more…guidelines.”

“I set my own.” She struggled for a moment to sit up straighter, and Steve had to help her with her bad knee and the makeshift lift for her leg. Once she’d settled again, Carter put a hand on his forearm, and waited until he’d looked at her to speak again. “I’m supposed to be going under the knife again soon, and then I’ll probably have another few weeks here. But after that, I think I’ll need a proper vacation.” She paused, considered what she was about to say, and then took the plunge. “Come with me.”

A smile crept slowly over Steve’s lips. “You’re serious?”

Carter was unfamiliar with the feeling settling into her stomach. It took a moment of stumbling over her words to realize it was fear, genuine and primal and not entirely welcome. “We can go anywhere. And it can just be us, finally—no supervillains, no tasks to cross off a list, no N or SHIELD or IMF. I’d very much like that, I think.”

Steve was quiet for a moment, for far longer than Carter would have expected or hoped. She was about to hurry ahead and assure him that she hadn’t meant it, that it had been a flight of fancy, when he rested his hands on the back of the lounge chair, one on either side of her head, bracing himself just a few inches from her face.

“I think I might like that, too,” he said.

“This doesn’t happen often,” Carter told him. Her voice shook; he was so close, and it was having an adverse effect on her ability to be debonair. This had never happened before. “You should feel quite pleased with yourself for even being invited along at all.”

“Oh, I’d play nursemaid for you any day, anywhere.”

Carter considered this, then put a hand on his shoulder. “I think I might love you a little bit, Mr. Rogers.”

Steve grinned, lopsided and bright. “I wasn’t sure you’d ever get around to saying it.”

“This is new territory for me; spies don’t fall in love.”

“Well, bankers do. All the time.” He closed the gap between them for a long, slow kiss, then pulled a little away to meet her eye. “I love you, Peggy.”

“Are we crazy?” Carter asked suddenly. “We hardly know each other.”

“I think you’re allowed to bypass the usual first-date banter once one of the interested parties rescues the other from certain death.”

“Oh, is that how it works?”

“It was in the most recent book on international dating laws, so yes.”

“Hush.” Carter dragged him toward her and kissed him again. Her heart was pounding and she was finding it hard to breath, and she kept telling herself that was because she hadn’t had this much physical activity since landing in the hospital, but she knew better. It was a day of firsts, a beautiful morning on which to find herself endlessly surprised, and she was glad to open her arms and embrace that which she did not know.

A man cleared his throat, and Carter pulled back from Steve and peeked over his shoulder. Standing about ten feet away, shuffling awkwardly, was the representative of the bank who had collected all their money and account information, back before the poker tournament had begun. He carried a case, and Carter recognized it as the same case that his companion had opened on the poker table at the Casino Royale.

“Mademoiselle Carter,” the man said, approaching now and offering a hand.

Steve leaned away and Carter sat forward to shake the banker’s hand. “Sir,” she said with a bob of the head. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Well, first of all, I’m glad to see you…in better spirits.” The banker grinned. “We were told of your accident, and all of us at the Swiss Bank wish you a speedy recovery.”

“That’s very kind.”

“Secondly—and I apologize for the delay, but you are no an easy woman to track down, Ms. Carter—I have come to give you your winnings.”

Carter stared at him for a full ten seconds before she remembered. “I won,” she said aloud.

The banker beamed. “You won, indeed, madam. Now, if you would be so kind…” He dragged over a low wooden table and set the case down, then opened it to reveal the same keypad into which Carter had typed her password over two months earlier. “First, please enter the account number of any bank account in the world, the one to which you’d like the funds transferred.”

Carter nodded to Steve. “Send it all to the IMF. I trust you lot to give me my money.”

Steve smirked and leaned over her body to type in the numbers. When this was done, the banker nodded and said, “And now, the password.”

Steve leaned back and gestured for Carter to do so, but she shook her head and waved him back. “You can do that,” she said cheerfully. “You know it.”

“You never told me,” Steve replied, but leaned back toward the keypad and waited.

“It’s simple. Six letters: R-O-G-E-R-S.”

Steve laughed as he entered the final letter with a flourish. The computer within the case accepted the code with an acquiescent beep, and the banker leaned over to lock it all up. “It’s an instant transfer, so your money is now available for withdrawal,” the banked explained, but Carter wasn’t listening. She’d nudged Steve under the chin to catch his attention and smirked, and they were now staring into each other’s eyes like lovesick teenagers, trying to make sense of whatever they saw there.

“A good day to you, Mademoiselle Carter,” the banked said, and retreated.

Once he was out of earshot, Carter said, “I want nothing more than to take you back to my room and keep you locked up there until we’re both fully recovered.”

“Maybe we should wait until your bum leg’s healed up,” Steve said.

Carter hooked a hand over the back of his neck and drew him in. “I don’t need a leg for what I want to do to you,” she whispered.

Steve grinned and whispered back, “Might help, though—for leverage, you know.”

“I think you can help me out there.”

They spent the week leading up to her second surgery taking longer and longer walks in the garden, disappearing behind hedges and dry fountains. Steve always returned Carter to her room in time for her daily check-up, and she was always in her wheelchair, though they were usually both out of breath and a bit disheveled. Dr. Banner seemed either not to notice or not to much care, though he did once smirk and ask that Carter get her elevated blood pressure in check.

The surgery was a success, and Dr. Banner estimated another six to eight weeks of recovery, and then Carter would be free to re-enter the world. “No adventuring,” he warned, “but you’ll be able to get around without the crutches. In small stretches, please.”

“I’m going on vacation,” Carter told him, and felt giddy at the prospect. In six weeks—she was only going to give them six more weeks to fix her, and then she was leaving, because she’d already missed the spring and most of the summer—she and Steve would be gallivanting off alone to God-only-knew where. They hadn’t decided anything yet, though Carter had mentioned the Riviera and Steve had said he’d taken a leave of absence from work and would very much like to see Rome. Carter had been, but then, she was better traveled than most. And they always said that most of the glittering European cities were best seen with someone you love.

The surgery was a success and the recovery afterward surprisingly manageable, especially when compared to the hell of the preceding months. It was now late summer, and some of the leaves on the trees were beginning to turn yellow or brown, perhaps more from the heat than a turn of seasons. A week after the surgery, Carter had already taken it upon herself to maneuver around the grounds on the tricked out set of crutches H had threatened her with months earlier but had finally actually sent—they were covered in purple and pink rhinestones that looked like they’d been glued on by a none-too-steady hand. And, as H was H, they were also capable of firing a rifle round out of the end. Carter never kept the crutch-guns loaded, however. She suspected Dr. Banner might not approve.

Steve had more or less moved into a hotel a ten-minute drive away from the hospital and left promptly at seven, once visiting hours had ended, each night. But he’d already charmed one of the night nurses and made it a habit of sneaking back into Carter’s room, with the nurse’s sly blessing.

They got caught in a rainstorm about two weeks into Carter’s recovery. They’d been enjoying a perfectly lovely morning in the rose garden when heavy gray clouds began to gather, unannounced, and then opened up over them. Carter had gotten good on the crutches, but after hurrying along for twenty feet toward the nearest building, breathless from laughing at the absurdity of it, Steve had scooped her easily into his arms and ran them the rest of the way.

“You never told me you were a bloody superhero,” Carter admonished, still laughing.

Steve winked down at her, then turned his eyes back ahead. “Through brightest day and blackest night, baby. Hold onto your crutches.”

It couldn’t have gone better if they’d planned it. This one building was a largely unused old outpost of the original villa, a building Dr. Banner had mentioned wanting to renovate, but did not yet have the funds to do so. For now, it had only a few huge rooms off of one long, narrow corridor, and each was stuffed with junk—forgotten beds, cabinets of linens that had gone gray with age, boxes of broken medical equipment, a few crates of canned peas that seemed to have been collecting dust since the hospital opened. Unless there was an urgent need for another bed—or a can of peas—hospital staffers rarely entered this building, and with the rain thundering down on the loose shingles, it appeared unlikely that anyone would enter this gloomy place until, at least, the rain abated.

Carter kissed Steve, the moment they’d cleared the threshold. It had become effortless to do so, something she sometimes just did without thinking about it. She liked the idea that he was hers, that she could plant a kiss on the top of his head or his cheek or his lips—or anywhere else—without anyone being able to say a word about it. Well, probably N would have something to say, once their travels were over and office life settled back into both of their routines, but Carter didn’t want her boss in her head whilst trying to seduce Steve.

He kissed her back and held her tight in his arms, pressing her closer to his chest. She dropped the crutches and threw her arms around his neck. There had been plenty of time alone in the last few weeks, and plenty of moments in bed, but any kind of real, lasting privacy had been tougher to come by—the nurses were always going about their rounds (though they could sometimes be persuaded to skip Carter’s room if she did something as amateurish as drape a sock over the doorknob) and there were always tests or physical therapy appointments to make. They could take their time here.

Steve broke the kiss just long enough to find a room with a bed that wasn’t covered in discarded catheter tubes, then kicked aside a few crumbling cardboard boxes and carried Carter in. She kissed him again as he gently laid her out on the standard hospital mattress. “How romantic,” she noted, glancing at the cobwebs and shadows and smirking.

Steve opened a window to let in the scent and sound of the summer rain and gestured to it. “Atmosphere,” he replied. “Your leg okay?”

“Come here.”

He stripped off his shirt and Carter sent a silent blessing out to the universe for the view. Steve threw himself at her with such force that they ended up rolling off the bed. Carter, cackling madly, tried to maintain contact of their lips, sprawled on top of him, even as Steve asked worriedly after her leg.

“It’s got two steel pins in it, I think I’m all right,” she said. “I landed on you, though.”

“My back's seen worse,” he replied, “but I’m not staying down here.”

Carter rolled off and allowed him to deadlift her back onto the bed. “Take two,” she sing-songed.

Steve tugged at the bottom of her shirt, a light, gauzy thing Martinelli had purchased in town and brought to her before heading back to Royale to clean up the mess they’d left there. “Excelsior,” he said, removing her shirt with a flourish.

When they’d finished—twice—it was still raining. Carter had to admit that opening the window had somehow transformed the room, letting a gray-blue glow pour over all the forgotten things and giving the whole place a lonely, romantic ambiance. They hadn’t heard so much as a splash of footsteps outside, and as Carter had no official meetings or appointments on her docket, she didn’t care what time it was or if they never saw another person ever again.

They’d figured out how to tilt the head of the bed up—it was so old that you had to crank it—and Carter lay with her back against it, her leg propped up on a case of peas and a ratty pillow. Steve lay on his side beside her, his head propped up on one arm while the other hand traced circles on her torso, occasionally sending shivers up her spine when his fingers ventured too low. The blankets had seemed too moth-eaten to be enjoyable, and the cool, rain-tinged breeze felt nice, so they lay stark naked in the gloom. Carter liked to think she’d more or less been born without any real modesty, and she’d slowly beaten the emotion—not literally, of course—out of Steve.

They’d already talked about almost everything, Carter felt, with all the empty hours together they’d had to fill. There hadn’t been much more to do here but walk, talk, sleep, and eat—not until she’d been cleared for more strenuous exertions, anyway—and she sometimes worried they’d run out of things to say to each other.

But a few days earlier, Carter had thought of the moment in the hotel in Royale when she’d found Steve in his shower, terrified—of the mission, or of her? He’d asked about her status as a double-oh agent and she’d evaded the question, answering without really answering. She took a deep breath now and said, “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Uh oh,” Steve said, and pressed a kiss to her temple. “You forgot to book the flight to France, didn’t you?”

“Of course not,” Carter replied, scandalized. If she was good for anything, it was planning ahead. “Be serious for a moment, would you?”

“Why? We spend all our lives being serious.”

Carter smiled wanly. “You’re starting to sound like me.”

“Am I stealing all your best lines?”

“Well, since you were so easy to get into bed, you’ll never know.” She put a hand on his cheek and had to work to clear the flirtatious smirk from her features. “I have to say this.”

Steve settled in, peering at her face with mild concern. His fingers had stopped traveling the length of her body, and his hand rested on her left shoulder, just over her heart.

“You probably already know,” she said slowly, “but I didn’t want us to have any secrets—nothing unspoken. I’ve built a career on lying to people, or, perhaps more accurately, concealing the truth, when necessary. I drop details from stories and add other ones in; I’ve never explained most of what I do to anyone.”

“I know what you do—”

Carter put a finger over his lips and smiled when he kissed it. “I want to say this out loud.” She sighed and looked at the ceiling. “SHIELD awards you Double-Oh status once you have two confirmed kills,” she said in a rush. “And they have to be big ones—big names, people on our lists of most wanted, most dangerous. SHIELD doesn’t necessarily encourage or even condone it, but once you’ve shown the willingness to do what you must for the organization, well…” She turned her head and looked at Steve again. “I murdered two very bad men and that’s why I’m 008.”

Steve was quiet for a time. Finally, he said, slightly awestruck, “There are only seven other people at SHIELD before you who kill people?”

“It’s been awhile since I got my designation,” Carter replied quietly, and forced a note of levity into her tone. “009 is actually quite lovely.”

They lay listening to the rain. Steve slowly rested his head against hers on the mattress and sighed. “Thank you for telling me,” he said gently. “I knew, but…I didn’t.”

“It had to be said,” Carter agreed.

“And it’s okay,” Steve continued. “SHIELD is this big, scary... _thing_ hanging over all of us, but I think now that’s just because it has to be big and scary to do its job. It’s okay that you do what you do. Some people might not think it is, but seeing it firsthand—it kind of changed my opinion on the whole thing, watching you risk your life like that.” He kissed her hair. “It’s okay. I love you.”

Carter smiled softly, teasing. “Still?”

Steve propped his head up again to meet her eye. He wasn’t smiling, and Carter thought his eyes even looked a little sad. He stroked her hair and said, “Always.”

 


	12. The Honeymoon is Over

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It seemed a bit late to be asking that of him, but Carter couldn’t help it if falling in love with Steve Rogers had made her something of a sentimental fool."
> 
> Who's ready for a finale?? (I'm not, for the record.)

They left for the French Riviera on a humid, sunny day in early September. It felt like a midsummer’s day would back in England, and Carter shook all other thoughts of home away. N had allowed her as much time for convalescence and relaxation as she saw fit; she wasn’t going to waste time thinking about SHIELD, London HQ, or all the awful things happening just below the newspaper headlines.

Carter had been disconnected long enough from the world that none of the papers carried any mention of the Red Skull anymore, though Steve assured her that hadn’t been the case in the week following Red’s execution. Headlines had yelled the news on the front page of basically every newspaper, in almost every language known to man. Men and women had been put on trial and sent to prison; money had been seized from illegitimate accounts and handed back to treasuries across the globe. Things were still balancing, but it felt okay to rejoin the world now.

And there were worse places to reassimilate to reality than a modest villa overlooking the Mediterranean. Along the very same beaches that had hosted the likes of Hemingway and Fitzgerald in the 1920s, Carter learned to walk again—to _live_ again. Within two days, she and Steve fell into a habit that became instantly familiar: wake late, drink coffee on the terrace, lounge or stroll on the beach, eat a heavy lunch at one of the local cafes, sleep, return to the beach, take a light meal at home (or, later, with one of the small circle of vacation friends who lived in the surrounding area, mostly Brits on holiday who, blissfully, didn’t wish to speak of work or home), drink themselves silly, make love until dawn, and begin the process anew the next morning.

These lazy days were punctuated with day trips once or twice a week, when one or the other would choose a destination—a point of interest, historical landmark, or museum, usually—and they’d spend a few hours exploring a new part of the landscape. They hadn’t initially rented a car, though they did end up renting one for a week, driving up and down the coast and running out of gas on the side of the road on more than one occasion. In her other life, her working life, Carter’s hackles would have risen at such an oversight; she would have gone on and on about security risks and the importance of constant vigilance.

But while she still slept with a small handgun under her pillow, and sometimes still strapped one onto her thigh, on the rare occasions she wore a skirt or slacks that would conceal it, Carter had largely chosen not to care about anything. She’d booked the flights, the villa, even the short-term rental car under a false identity, and the locals called her “Madame Steve,” and that was all. If anyone showed up to assassinate her, they deserved the kill.

They’d rented the villa for a few weeks, as Carter felt it would get too depressing to stay on the Riviera much beyond that—the place wouldn’t so much change, but the tourists would begin to leave, and while she was happy with the prospect of a week or two completely alone with Steve on their beach, Carter didn’t much relish being _quite_ so secluded. In late September, as they packed grudgingly for their next excursion, Carter suggested Paris.

Steve was resistant. “If my boss sees me back in town, he’ll probably send me a stack of financial reports to go over,” he said. “And where’s the fun of vacationing in the place I live?”

“It’s called a staycation,” Carter replied haughtily. “You save money.”

“Aren’t you a millionaire?”

Carter sighed. “Don’t be such a snob. It’s different if you’re trying to holiday in Iowa, or somewhere. You live in _Paris_.”

But, as he showed no signs of budging, Carter let the subject drop and agreed to his suggestion that they travel onto Switzerland. She’d seen the Eifel Tower plenty, in all four seasons, and she wasn’t exactly disappointed not to be returning.

And she pushed away an insistent feeling in her gut, a nagging doubt of Steve’s motives. Did he not want her in his space, to see his flat? Did he not want her to meet his colleagues, the few friends he occasionally mentioned? What was he hiding in Paris? She felt foolish, thinking on such things, and decided to trust Steve implicitly. Not that she hadn’t before, but there was something truly rewarding in acknowledging this definitively. If Steve let her down— _he wouldn’t_ —then it would be on both of them: he for lying and she for falling in love, the oldest trick in the book.

They swung through Geneva in late October and then onward into the Alps, where Carter attempted to teach Steve to ski (a failure) and he tried to teach her to draw (also a failure). They had a cabin at a remote resort all to themselves, though they would have to vacate in December, at the latest, for a family that came up every year for the winter holidays. On an impulse, Steve had found and booked a room at a grand hotel in Tuscany, beginning on what would be Thanksgiving back in the States, and Carter readily agreed to the change in scenery.

They spent the New Year in Rome, rarely leaving their hotel room for the week following the celebratory festivities. One morning, with Steve wrapped in her arms and already craving fresh pasta, Carter realized she hadn’t checked her voicemail or emails in over four months. If N needed her, he would find her, and she was sure she’d packed her laptop and phone somewhere, should the urge to work strike. But then she reminded herself of her resolution for the year—no more long hours at work—and promptly fell back to sleep.

The weather would be miserable in London just now, but Venice, somehow, remained perfect, even in February. Carter and Steve had returned to their room in Tuscany for a time, and then Steve had suggested they take a longer cultural excursion. Tuscany had made them fat and lazy, he joked, and Carter agreed with a bright laugh that it might be best to do some real exploring in a new city.

They spent their first day in Venice sailing. Neither of them really knew how to do it, but Carter had gotten the idea in her head that anything worth doing in Venice was worth doing on the water, like a local. A kindly old woman spent a few hours quite literally teaching them the ropes—which ones to pull, how to tie them tight—and still offered one of her sons as a deckhand. But Carter felt confident in their abilities and they promised to have the boat back in two hours’ time.

Carter had since located her laptop, and brought it along for their excursion. With Steve at the wheel, piloting them through the canal and out onto the open sea, Carter opened her email and winced as the laptop froze, downloading upwards of a few thousand emails. Most of it was junk—not spam, as it was basically impossible to get SHIELD addresses, but office messages Carter didn’t need and conversational chains that had become irrelevant to her months ago—and a few were N, “just checking in.” Carter skimmed a few, noted the overly friendly tone in some of N’s messages and decided his Chief of Staff had probably sent them, and replied to none.

She glanced up at Steve, standing straight and tall in nice slacks and a short-sleeved shirt, sunglasses over his eyes. His face looked drawn—Carter had caught him with that worried expression on his face quite a few times over the last few months, always when he thought she was absorbed in something else, or too busy to be looking at him. But, of course, she’d noticed. She’d tried bringing it up, but, like the subject of Paris, it seemed to be off-limits.

As time had gone on, it had seemed to Carter that Steve had gotten more agitated in these quiet moments, and worse at hiding it, and she’d tried again to ask after him about it just the night before, over a long, luxurious dinner out. She’d been rebuffed, if gently, and only when she’d reminded Steve, sounding a little hurt, that they’d agreed not to keep anything from each other, had he given her a weary smile.

“One day,” he’d said, and taken her hand across the table. “I’m just working out some things. Once I can get it straight myself, I’ll tell you the whole story.”

He felt her eyes on him and turned quickly from whatever had caught his eye on the dock, and smiled at her. It wasn’t quite as broad or genuine as his grins could be, but it assuaged some of the fear. She hadn’t lost him—she could still draw him out of whatever depths to which he had a habit of descending as of late. Carter pushed her sunglasses back into her hair, so he could see her eyes, and smiled in reply. She then turned back to her laptop and composed a new message:

> _N,_
> 
> _I hereby tender my resignation, effective immediately._
> 
> _Peggy._

Once it had gone through, Carter shut the laptop and considered throwing it into the canal. But that was rash, even for her. She placed it back in her bag below deck, then rejoined Steve in the sunlight.

They could discuss it tonight over drinks, what this resignation meant. Carter wanted Steve with her, and she liked to think he’d meant it all the times he’d said he’d follow her anywhere. She understood searching for the right words; she understood waiting until things had settled to explain herself. She would give him the time, and let him come to her with his story, on his own time, and willingly. As she joined him at the helm and pecked him on the cheek, she watched his anxiety dissolve—if only for the moment—and felt sure that things were going to be just fine.

They’d been in Venice for a week, staying in a suite at one of the grandest old hotels. All the rooms boasted original cornice work, real gold leaf, and marble columns, and theirs also had a stunning view of a wide canal below, and the sea far off to their left (if they leaned over the balcony and squinted a bit). They’d made steady work of eating and drinking their way through the winding streets and had put together a long list of acceptable tourist activities in which to partake. They’d been “on the run,” as Carter jokingly put it, for nearly six months, and while money certainly wasn’t an issue, not working had put Carter on edge. She didn’t regret resigning from SHIELD, but she watched the men loading boats on the docks and the kids waiting tables at cafes and felt a pang of need.

She and Steve were still in bed at noon one glorious day, the curtains open but their door barred against nosy maids, and she broached the subject. “We could find a flat,” she mused, keeping it vague and dreamy, so as not to scare Steve off—or startle herself. Once it became real, she might feel differently, but settling in Italy, in Switzerland, in France—hell, even in Montenegro—sounded right. “I can sell goat’s milk.”

Steve shot her an incredulous look. “Where would we keep a goat?”

“In the flat, of course.” Carter laughed and swatted Steve’s shoulder as he pinned her to the bed and kissed her neck. “All right,” she said breathlessly, “so no goat.”

“No goat,” Steve agreed, and kissed her. Finally, he released her and admitted, “It could work. Not the goat thing, but being here.”

“You could paint, I could open a private detective business for Venice’s glittering elite…”

Steve raised an eyebrow. “We sound like a cozy crime series.”

“We must use our God-given skills, darling, or else they go to waste.”

Steve sat up and reached for his watch, on the bedside table where he always left it, and cursed at the time. “Speaking of jobs and money,” he said, then smirked, “and goats, I’ve got to get to the bank.”

Carter frowned. “Whatever for?”

“I set up a meeting—remember? I want to transfer some funds around, start paying my own way. How much do you think we’ll need to float for another month?”

Carter remembered the meeting. But as Steve slid out of bed and began tugging on yesterday’s slacks, she caught the back pocket and dragged him back. “Nonsense,” she breathed in his ear. “I’ve got upwards of eighty million dollars, courtesy of assorted private enterprises.”

“As much as I enjoy being a kept man, it’ll be good for my ego.” He extracted himself from her and walked to his bag, digging out a new shirt and then his phone. Steve sighed. “My boss,” he said, after reading something on the screen. “SHIELD’s vacation policy may allow for six months’ leave at the drop of a hat, but the IMF is getting testy.” He typed out a reply, then slipped the phone into his pocket. “I’ll give him a call once I’m done at the bank.”

Reluctantly, Carter climbed out of bed and went about collecting a new outfit to wear for the day—a gauzy red dress, the likes of which she would never have warn in her free time before all this, and a large tan hat she’d purchased in Tuscany. “You go be Mr. Banker, and I’ll go buy three bottles of red wine and some kind of lunch, and I’ll meet you back here in the lobby,” she said as she dressed. “We can have a picnic on the docks and then—I don’t know, a museum, or something?”

Steve laughed. “For someone as cultured as you seem to be, you really don’t like cultural institutions, do you?”

“As cultured as I _seem_ to be,” Carter repeated, with emphasis, and grinned. “Hush, I love museums. You think about where we should go and we’ll figure it out after lunch.”

Steve walked over to the edge of the bed, where Carter was affixing her left sandal to her foot, and ran a hand over her bare shoulder. “We’re going to end up back here, aren’t we?”

She glanced up at him. “We’d better let the maid in to tidy up, then,” she replied, and took his hand. “Come on, let’s be the productive adults I know we can be.”

They agreed to meet back at the hotel in half an hour, and Carter returned early. She went up to the room to drop off her purchases, and while trying to decide whether to grab a cat nap or head back out and enjoy the sunshine, her phone rang. It was N, she saw, and she answered reluctantly.

“I got your note,” N said, treading carefully. “I wish I could say I wasn’t disappointed.”

“It was time to step away,” Carter replied with equal care.

“I’m not calling to try to win you back,” N assured her. “Do what you want and leave me out of it. You’re the world’s problem now, not mine. But…” He coughed. “I’ve got an IMF rep here in my office who’s pretty curious when you’ll be depositing your winnings into their payment account.”

Carter’s blood ran cold. She hadn’t bothered to learn the account number, so she hadn’t paid attention when Steve had input the number into the encryption machine all those months ago, and she’d trusted him enough not to check any of the accounts to make sure the money had landed where it needed to. As far as the IMF—and the U.S. Treasury, she realized with a start—was concerned, Carter was nothing better than a common criminal.

“Shame,” Carter said smoothly, “I’d hoped no one would notice.”

“You got caught,” N said. His voice had a note of warning—Carter suspected he’d put together more from her tone than he was willing to let on in front of the representative in his office. “You’ll sort it out today?”

“I was just on my way to the bank.”

Carter hung up and left the suite, the wine and sunshine forgotten. They’d gone their separate ways outside the hotel, but it was nearly impossible for someone with espionage in their blood _not_ to follow a suspicious character on mystery errands in a glittering foreign locale. She hurried in the direction of the bank, and though Steve had a head start, she suspected he’d still be inside. She settled casually at a café across the plaza from the bank’s front entrance and kept an eye out for his tall, broad frame—he wouldn’t be hard to find.

In an attempt not to think through the implications of her discussion with N, Carter chose to be angry with herself, here and now, for choosing perhaps the worst covert outfit imaginable. One of the first things SHIELD taught you was never to wear bright colors or bold patterns on a mission, as they both attracted attention and made you memorable. A week in the future, any one of the people who had already strolled past Carter and glanced in her direction might find themselves thinking, “I ought to find a dress like that red one the lady in the large hat was wearing in Venice,” or, “I wish I had stopped to talk to that woman in the red dress.” In Carter’s line of work, being forgettable was a boon.

She’d ordered an espresso, in an attempt to be less obvious, but then only took one sip. She spoke only a little Italian and didn’t read much at all, but she picked up a local newspaper someone had discarded on another chair. After feigning interest in what appeared to be an editorial about some bridge or other in the city, Carter caught Steve in her periphery and hazarded a glance. He was walking across the plaza with a modestly sized attaché case in hand, headed the opposite direction from their hotel. For a dizzying moment, Carter thought it was the infamous case that had held the five million he’d refused to give her for the re-buy for the poker game, but this one was black, not brown, and just a touch larger. Carter took another sip of espresso, then tossed enough money down to cover it, folded up the newspaper to tuck under her arm, and followed him.

The streets were thick with tourists perusing the shops and contemplating gondola rides, but Steve stood head and shoulders over most of them and, thus, was easy enough to follow. Carter removed her hat, hoping to make herself less conspicuous, and moved in the flow of foot traffic with an easy gait. At this unhurried pace, Carter found the time to berate herself—she’d given Steve his space, his privacy, because that’s what adults did in relationships. They set and respected boundaries, and they had discussions when things needed to be discussed. She could’ve easily cracked his phone’s passcode, downloaded every single one of his old texts, emails, and bloody Facebook messages, and known the whole story in an instant. But she’d given him the benefit of the doubt; she’d trusted him.

 _Please,_ she begged silently, _don’t be like any other person I’ve ever met—bogged down with secrets that could kill us both._ It seemed a bit late to be asking that of him, but Carter couldn’t help it if falling in love with Steve Rogers had made her something of a sentimental fool.

Steve glanced back only once, but his eyes swept along a row of storefronts and missed Carter completely. She silently chided him for not being more careful, and made a note to discuss his technique when they got back to the room that afternoon— _if_ they got back. She shook the thought away and followed as Steve ducked down a long, narrow alleyway, and disappeared.

Carter saw, first, that the alley seemed to open into a courtyard a few yards down, and then that there was no way for her to sneak after Steve without him spotting her. She walked three buildings down on the main thoroughfare and was gratified to see that the courtyard was also accessible through the alley she found, and hurried down it. At the end, Carter pressed herself against the cool stone and watched from the shadows.

Steve had emerged into the bright sun of the courtyard and stood awkwardly on the tan stone, the knuckles around the attaché case turning white with the tight grip. He didn’t signal or call out, but a redheaded woman flanked by two men in smart Italian suits stepped from the opposite side of the courtyard. The woman wore large sunglasses and, despite the warm sun, an all-black ensemble, consisting of pumps, sheer tights, a dress, a suit jacket, and leather gloves. Her belt—also black—was emblazoned with some kind of symbol, done in blood red.

“Mr. Rogers,” the woman said, her voice heavily accented—Russian, Carter noted.

“Ms. Romanova,” Steve replied with an incline of the head in greeting. His voice shook. He stepped forward, holding out the case, and both men rushed forward. One bent an arm behind Steve’s back and kneed him in the gut, while the other took the case and hurried it back to the woman. He opened it for her, and she made a great show of pawing through the bills within.

Carter crept around the corner and into a shaded doorway a little closer to the scene. She didn’t recognize the woman, the name, the voice, or the men, but she was taking careful mental note of it all to send along to N. It appeared she might be rescinding her resignation, after all—and handing her boyfriend over to SHIELD on charges of collusion.

“It’s all there,” Steve gasped. The man in the suit pulled Steve upright, but kept his arm twisted up behind his back. “Where is he?”

“Sergeant Barnes was…unwell,” the redhead replied. She snapped the case shut and smiled. “He was unable to be moved; nothing we could do. We will meet again with further instructions.”

Steve gaped at her. “That’s not fair,” he argued, even as the woman turned her back and beckoned for her men to follow. “That’s not fair!” Steve insisted again, louder, angrier, eliciting no response from the woman. “I pay you, and I get my friend back. That was our deal.”

The woman sighed and turned back. “You pay, and we discuss,” she said slowly. “It was quite impossible for Sergeant Barnes to join us today. That is all there is to be said, Mr. Rogers. Next time, perhaps." She waved an unconcerned hand in the air. "We will discuss further payment.”

“That’s all there is,” Steve said, his shoulders falling.

Even in the Red Skull’s compound, Carter had never heard Steve sound so hopeless, so distressed. She had no weapon but her wits and she technically wasn’t a spy anymore; she was an unarmed civilian.

She didn't think beyond that. She leapt from the doorway and shouted, with as much authority as she could muster, “Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to come with me.”

The redhead seemed bemused; one of her companions actually smirked. Steve whispered urgently, “Peggy, _don’t_.”

“On the authority of SHIELD, I ask you to put down the briefcase and surrender any weapons,” Carter continued. Without a badge or a gun, she wasn’t sure what to do with her hands, so she held one up, as if brandishing her ID, and put the other on her hip. She felt like a traffic cop—and a lying one, at that, since she wasn’t technically part of SHIELD anymore. But she chose to ignore the semantics.

“And if I do not?” the redhead replied.

Carter didn’t have an answer—the woman didn’t seem to mind. In an instant, both of her companions had pulled guns and Carter had reached for Steve to drag him into a doorway for what meager cover it could provide. But the redhead lunged forward first and took hold of his shoulder, pulling a knife and pressing it to Steve’s back as the quartet hustled backward into the shadows.

Once the gunfire had ceased, Carter discarded her hat and took off after them. The redheaded woman seemed to know her way around the twisting back roads and alleys, taking Steve and her men running over canals and around corners and, finally, into an abandoned building. Carter followed, and allowed herself once more to wish that she’d thought to bring her handgun. But she pushed the thought away and focused on the chase, hurrying up stairs that seemed to be in the middle of a major renovation. She tripped, but used the momentum to propel herself up the stairs even quicker, hitting the upper floor just as the redhead shoved Steve roughly into a rickety cage elevator straight out of Victorian set decor and locked the door.

The henchmen both turned their guns and fired, and Carter ducked behind a piece of machinery. She picked up a hammer and a heavy pipe, the best she could find in terms of self-defense, and crept around behind another pile of construction material—bricks, she noted, and what she assumed was a cement mixer. The gunfire stopped again and the two men and the woman were speaking Russian in low tones, and then Carter could follow the smart clack of the men’s dress shoes on the floor—one was looping around the way Carter had gone, and the other was coming around the other side.

Carter went for the second, as he was closer, and cracked him across the skull with the pipe, collecting his gun once she was sure he was out cold. When the other man appeared, Carter fired two shots—one into his kneecap and the other into his shoulder—and then hurried around and held the gun on the redhead.

“Let him out and surrender yourself,” Carter demanded in a low voice.

To Carter’s surprise, the redheaded woman smiled slowly. Almost casually, she twirled her knife in one hand, the little finger of her other hand dangling the key to the elevator door in the air. “Don’t do anything rash, Agent Carter.”

Carter narrowed her eyes. The redhead winked, tossed the key, and ran for the stairs without stopping to check on her compatriots. Carter caught the key and considered running after her, but the woman had already vanished out onto the Venetian streets. Carter, aware that she’d only incapacitated the redhead’s men (and for only a short while, most likely), crossed to the elevator and put the key into the lock.

Steve came forward and put his fingers through the bars, wrapping his hand as best he could around her hand and the lock. “I’m sorry. I am so sorry.”

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t leave you here to rot,” Carter replied, her voice cold.

“I deserve that,” Steve said quietly, “for lying to you.”

Carter shook off his hand and removed the key. “Explain yourself.”

“My best friend growing up was a kid named James Barnes,” Steve said. “The kids on the block, we called him Bucky—his middle name was Buchanan, and basically, with a moniker like that, either you let the kids come up with an awful nickname or you get bullied into an early grave.”

Carter frowned, hoping her impatience was palpable.

Steve held up a hand, as if to fend off an attack; apparently, it was. “I was a scrawny kid,” he continued in a hurry. “My dad was dead and my mom worked too much, and she was always sick. If Buck hadn’t been around, I wouldn’t have made it through high school. We both went into the army, then college. I got into finances, he stuck with the military, and ended up in some kind of top secret shit I wasn’t allowed to hear about.” Steve paused, and the emotion in his eyes was obvious—and, Carter noted, genuine. “Couple months back, he gets caught in a firefight in Afghanistan and disappears. The government’s ready to write him off, even when his mother gets an email with a video attachment. It was thirty seconds of stilted English explaining that Sergeant James Barnes was an evil man for whatever he’d been doing for the US Army, and then a full minute of them torturing him. Buck’s commanding officer took it to the higher-ups, but they said he was dead already.

“I don’t give up on lost causes. Mrs. Barnes got another video, asking for information and money. We got a contact name—Romanova—and an email. It looked like they were holding him in some kind of facility—a training camp, or a prison camp, I don’t know. I thought Russia was on our side now, with the Cold War thing being over and all, so I thought we could reason with them.”

“Not bloody likely,” Carter muttered.

Steve paused to absorb the slight, then continued. “And then I got assigned to shadow you,” he said, “and the money was just _there_ , waiting. I knew I could get him back, for me and his folks and his family. I love Bucky like a brother; I couldn’t give up on him.”

Carter’s tone hadn’t softened. If anything, she was angrier than she had been when she’d just though Steve was a run-of-the-mill traitor, handing over cash and secrets to the Russians. “You could’ve come to me,” she nearly shouted at him, clutching one of the elevator bars. “You _should_ have come to me! SHIELD is a global organization; we have eyes and ears—and operatives—everywhere. Do you understand how easy it could have been for me to arrange an extraction?”

Steve got angry, too. “Why? Why would SHIELD bother to send anyone after my friend? If the US government didn’t give a fuck about him, why should you?”

“He’s important enough to still be alive,” Carter explained. Her grip on the bar loosened, just a bit. “If what he was doing was top secret enough that the United States won’t claim him, that tells me he may have been working outside their express jurisdiction.” Carter sighed. “It sounds like your friend is important—too important for anyone to admit he even exists, unless it's to exchange him for intel. But SHIELD can be made to see why we need him alive.” She paused. “And away from the Russians. Away from the Russians might be the number one reason.”

“Behind you!” Steve shouted, and ducked, and Carter spun and fired without thinking.

She clipped the neck of the man she’d hit with the pipe and shook her head. “We’re having a conversation,” she yelled. “I’ll deal with you in a moment, sir.” She turned back to the elevator and, slowly, slipped the key into the lock and opened the door. “Get out,” she ordered Steve, “and help me put them in.”

Once the men were safely ensconced in their lift prison and the proper Venetian authorities had been alerted, Carter wrapped the gun— _might need that_ —into a newspaper she found discarded at the construction site and held it tight under her arm. She slipped the opposite arm through one of Steve’s and led him stiffly back to the hotel, not so much romantic as a warden marching a prisoner to the electric chair. His story seemed legitimate, but there was a lot she’d have to confirm and plenty she’d have to plan, and there was still the little matter of him handing millions of American dollars to a mysterious Russian woman who was most likely an operative of some kind, though Carter hadn’t yet worked out why the woman had let them both go.

Back in the suite, Carter handcuffed Steve to a chair in their bedroom and ordered room service. Once the food had arrived, she moved all the silverware out of Steve’s reach and handed him a sandwich to eat. She herself had ordered a steak, bloody, with a fresh vegetable medley as a side, and interrogated Steve, relatively gently, over a glass of deep red wine. His story never wavered, and he willingly gave her all the background information she needed—Barnes’ full name and date of birth, plus the names of everyone in his family and their address back in Brooklyn. He showed her the original emails—encrypted, very sophisticated—that Barnes’ mother had received, and either transcripts of or notes on the few conversations Steve had had with the woman, Romanova, and assorted members of the United States Army’s upper echelon. No one would admit to knowing what Barnes had been up to, and no one could say what the Russians wanted with him (if they admitted it was the Russians who had him, at all).

Lastly, he asked to dig through one of his bags, and after a moment, he held up a set of dogtags for Carter’s inspection. Instead of his name, rank, and number, she saw that they were emblazoned with the name James Buchanan Barnes.

“They’re old,” Steve explained, “from our first tour. We traded when we both moved up in the world. Said it was for luck.”

“Luck,” Carter echoed faintly, catching the tags. She met Steve’s eye. “May I?” He released them and she looked closer, noting that the tags looked freshly polished, cared for. She smiled sadly. “There are still things I’ll never know about you, Mr. Rogers, even after all this time.”

“That was it, the last secret. I can promise you that.” Steve heaved a sigh. “I just wanted my brother back.”

Carter couldn’t think of anyone who would drive her to such circumstances. Perhaps Martinelli, though she knew Martinelli would want Carter to leave her behind, if it came right down to it. That was why she and Martinelli (and, yes, this James Barnes) were operating on another playing field, one on which Steve Rogers and those of his ilk would never survive.

But she had to pause, and she had to be honest with herself. If she had posed the same hypothetical to herself even twelve hours ago, or if someone had burst in the door with a gun and threatened to kill them both, Carter would have gladly thrown herself in front of a bullet for Steve. It was a little frightening to find within herself the realization that, if the same scenario played out now, she would still do it. She would risk everything for Steve.

“I have to call N,” she said softly, half to herself, and set the dogtags on the bed between them. Steve reached out to take them back, and Carter put her hand over his. They sat like that, lost in limbo, for a full minute.

“I will never lie to you again,” Steve said. He’d been making variations of the same pronouncement since she’d let him out of the lift. “It was a mistake. I didn’t want to put you in danger.”

“Danger follows me around. Danger, you don’t have to worry about.” Carter found herself smiling, and realized she felt lighter than she had in months—possibly years. The worst had come to pass and all her suspicions about Steve had turned out to be correct. But if everything checked out, and if N would have her back, and if she could save James Barnes from wherever he was being held, Carter knew that, yes, she’d be careful in the future, but, no, she wouldn’t have to worry about Steve Rogers again.

“I know you won’t lie, because I won’t allow it,” she added, and patted his hand. “I had my own concerns and I never broached them—not the way I wanted to, anyway. I never take no for an answer on a mission and, I’m sorry to say, I shouldn’t have here. We could have saved ourselves a lot of strain, if I’d just used all the old tricks and worked out the real reason for your distance.” She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “And you’re damn lucky to be alive right now.”

“You don’t believe in luck,” Steve replied. Carter was gratified to hear the hint of nerves in his voice.

“I have to call N.” She leaned away, stacked their dishes on the silver room service tray, and shifted it all out of Steve’s reach. “It’ll be a long call, but it will be worth it. By the end of it, I’ll be reinstated as a SHIELD agent and your story will have been pored over by the best minds around the globe.” She paused. “And by the time I come back from this very long call, Steve, I expect you to have come up with a good way to thank me for my benevolence.”

Steve held up his handcuffed wrist. “I might need to be let out of these to really prove how sorry I am—and how thankful.”

Carter smirked over her shoulder. “I think I’ll keep you like that for awhile longer. Just until I’m done with you.”

“I deserve it,” Steve agreed, easily enough. Then, his face grew more serious. “You’re doing all of this for me, and you say you would’ve helped me sooner. Is it all just because of what Buck might know, or what he might’ve learned?”

“No secrets?” Carter asked.

Steve shook his head. “None. Never again.”

“It’s because I love you, Steve Rogers,” Carter admitted, and smiled brightly as she picked up her phone from the nightstand and scrolled through her contacts for N’s private line. “But if you tell anyone that, I just might have to kill you.”

 


	13. Coda: The Winter Soldier

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 13, time for an epilogue!
> 
> (Surprise?)

**_Three Months Later_ **

Siberia was as dark and cold as the omniscient "they" had always said it was. Carter had been to Moscow plenty of times, and had even spent three months living with a farming family in a small house in some province with a name unpronounceable by her English tongue, but she’d never experienced a cold this deep, nor a dark this total.

She and the rest of the extraction team wore sleek white bodysuits from H’s latest round of fiddling—they were padded with some kind of super-thin, super-heated material that used the body’s natural heat to keep the wearer warm, as well as employing a heating system, set up in a pack worn on the back, that could be engaged when body heat was not enough. On the ride to the drop site, sitting in the suits had felt like wearing an oven, pressed tight to the flesh, but out here, everyone had turned on the heating system and pulled on their full face masks and goggles to protect against the wind.

Their team commander raised a hand and then gestured for them all to move forward. They all wore earpieces and each suit had a mic built into the neck, but they’d agreed on total radio silence until the extraction was complete. Silently, Carter and the six other agents on the team crept after their commander, leaving footprints in the snow that were very quickly brushed over by the wind.

The compound was easy to miss, if you weren’t looking for it. Built from pale stone and concrete, only one low square building was visible aboveground; as they’d been briefed, the majority of activity took place below the surface, where it was easier to keep out of the elements. It was a training camp, of sorts, part laboratory and part barracks, but they seemed to keep the staff relatively limited—all told, there were only about one hundred men and women living here underground. Of those, perhaps ninety-five percent were actually there of their own free will.

They had a contact on the inside who had worked many years for the KGB before joining SHIELD. Being an international organization, SHIELD was more forgiving of those who had worked for former enemy governments, especially when their former enemies were willing to both share the secrets they’d learned, and then dive right back into their former homelands in order to suss out more information. Their contact for this job had spent the last two years infiltrating the base and sending back floor plans and translated documents for their records. There were strange military experiments happening here, she said, and the Russians were “recruiting” the best military and covert minds from around the world to work on a new type of super soldier, the likes of which hadn’t been attempted since the height of the Cold War.

They wouldn’t have to storm the base, just break into one small section. Their focus was one James Buchanan Barnes, though their contact had mentioned two other high-risk prisoners who could also prove useful, if extracting them proved feasible. The team commander led the squad to the door their contact had pointed out on her most recent delivery of schematics, and the team's tech wizard—one of H's prodigies—had it open in a matter of minutes.. They were in.

Shaking snow from their jumpsuits, the team hurried along the hallways, avoiding direct confrontation with any guards they could. The hope was that they would be in and out before anyone could raise an alarm, though Carter had learned not to count on such outcomes. Her mind went, fleetingly, to Steve, waiting with the Barnes family with N and a few other SHIELD executives at a nice hotel in Prague, and then she pushed him away. The best thing she could do for him—for them—was to bring Barnes home.

They followed the path they’d been studying for the last month, courtesy of their Russian mole—down one long, dark hall, then left, down the stairs, right, down the stairs, straight. Back in London, H and his team had already replaced the security feeds with old loops of previous recordings, so nothing appeared out the ordinary to the security team watching the cameras as the extraction team approached the hallway far below ground that held the four prisoners.

The team commander crept door to door, peering in through a small opening at the top of each to spot their target. There were a lot of cells down here, but not as many prisoners as there apparently once had been. Before they could find Barnes themselves, a door opened halfway down the hall and the redhead Carter had met in Venice stepped out, wearing a jumpsuit nearly identical to the team’s, though hers was black, better suited to walking in the base’s shadows, and she wore no face mask.

“He’s here,” she said, her voice now tinged with an American accent, without any trace of the Russian she’d displayed in Venice.

The commander pulled off his hood and smiled. “Black Widow.”

"Hawkeye." She shook his hand and ushered the team into the room, but Carter paused and pulled off her face mask, too.

“You’re our contact,” she said, finally putting it together.

“I told them I’d killed you,” the redhead replied, apparently meaning her super-secret Russian bosses. “I hope I bought you some time.”

“Thanks.”

Carter left it at that and entered the cell. Two members of the extraction team were already working on the prisoner, removing metal cuffs from Barnes’ wrists, ankles, and neck. Barnes sat in a chair, his hair overgrown and his eyes deeply sunken, and his breathing was steady; he appeared to have been drugged.

The Black Widow led the other members of the team down the hall to release the other two prisoners—a brother and sister, according to the dossiers N had handed out—and Carter moved closer to Barnes, to see if she could help. And that was when she noticed the metal on his right arm. It was either some kind of armor plating, or they’d replaced the right arm entirely with a robotic prosthetic; they’d need SHIELD’s tech monkeys to work that out, or else they’d have to ask Barnes himself.

The team released the soldier and tried to wake him. Carter was gratified when the man groaned, coming around to consciousness. She came forward and crouched before him. “Bucky,” she said, “Steve sent me to get you. Your family’s waiting for you.”

Barnes’ eyes opened, and it took an extra moment for them to narrow and focus on Carter’s face. “Bucky,” he echoed. “Who the hell is Bucky?”

Brainwashed—of course. He’d been here for months, suffering unspeakable tortures and experimentation. Carter wasn’t sure why she’d expected him to be himself.

“Let’s move him out,” Carter told the agents on either side of Barnes, and after briefly checking his vitals, they led him out into the hall. The team regrouped, now with the three prisoners and the Black Widow in tow, and though they moved a bit slower than when they’d come in, they managed to escape the base without incident, leaving behind only one subdued guard and the malfunctioning lock on the outer door as proof that they’d been there at all.

On the flight to Prague, each of the liberated prisoners was given a heavy sedative and a thorough medical examination. Barnes’ arm, it appeared, had been fully replaced with some kind of metal alloy, and some advanced medical science allowed for it to be directly connected to his brain, so he could control the robotic arm as if it were the one he’d been born with.

The Black Widow explained the project in depth. “They called Sergeant Barnes the ‘Winter Soldier,’” she said eventually, after recounting what she knew of the scientists and doctors on the project. “They wanted to make him a weapon—the best there is. An infallible soldier, with perfect obedience. The arm was just the doctors playing god.” Her face made plain her disgust. “They’ve been experimenting with robotics and advanced weaponry for decades, but grafting it onto a human body was the next step.”

They touched down in Prague and were rushed to a SHIELD outpost in the city, complete with a full medical clinic. After changing into civilian clothes, Carter returned to check on their three new guests, just as N arrived with Barnes’ family—and Steve. The family went immediately to Barnes, and there was a round of hand-shaking and clapping on the back to be done between the successful extraction team and their SHIELD superiors. N gave Carter a smirk as he patted her shoulder and went into the clinic to see just who they had rescued.

Carter found herself alone in the hall with Steve. Their relationship had cooled a bit since the revelation of his potentially traitorous activities, but it hadn’t been easy to stay away from him—especially once N said they wouldn’t be pressing charges. Steve had been put on indefinite leave from the IMF, as they weren’t as forgiving as SHIELD could be, but Steve had returned to his flat in Paris and had passed the time job hunting, occasionally moonlighting in SHIELD’s finance department and seemingly glad to be counting beans for field agents.

Carter had been focused on the Barnes extraction and hadn’t been home much, catching sleep when she could in her office at SHIELD’s London headquarters. She’d made the trip to Paris only twice in three months, but Steve had been able to visit her much more often, and they’d finally settled into something that felt as normal as it ever would for two people like them.

Now, Steve came forward and wrapped Carter in a tight embrace. “Thank you.”

“Go,” she replied, and kissed him on the cheek. She gave him a playful shove toward the clinic doors. “He’s…confused. But you should be there when he wakes up. It will help.”

“You’re okay?” Steve asked.

“I’m fine,” Carter assured him. “And I’ll be here when you come back.”

He squeezed her shoulder and then went wordlessly to visit his friend. As Steve entered, N exited, and Carter noticed for the first time the slim black briefcase he carried.

“Carter.” He beckoned her away from the doors.

“Nicholas,” Carter replied in a low voice, and grinned when he glowered at her.

“I said I’d kill you, didn’t I?”

“You can’t. Not yet, anyway. I’ll keep an eye open, though, once the new mission is complete.” She grinned broadly when he narrowed his good eye—the other was behind an eyepatch, ruined in some incident he'd never fully explained—at her.

N sighed, set the briefcase on a chair, and clicked it open, He pulled out a heavy red folder, stamped across the front with a plethora of “top secret” and “for Double-Oh only” warnings. He handed it to her, as she’d suspected he would, and said, “Leave immediately. There’s a car out front.”

Carter took the folder and paused. She glanced back at the clinic, and through the large observation windows, she could just see Steve, his arm around Mrs. Barnes, as they spoke gently to a now awake James Barnes. The poor man still looked confused, but he allowed his mother to gently stroke his hair; he would heal.

“I can leave tomorrow,” she told N, turning back.

“As much as you think you do, you don’t call the shots, 008,” N reminded her.

“I made a promise and I intend to keep it.” She tucked the folder into the large purse she carried mostly for show, then sat in one of the uncomfortable chairs set along the clinic wall, meant for waiting. She was going to see Steve when he emerged; she’d said she’d be here, and she would be. She was done with lying, from both of them, to both of them. She and Steve were in it together, to the end of the line.

“Will twelve hours really matter?” she pressed.

N held her gaze, and he was either on the verge of firing her or hugging her. He did neither. “Get a good night’s sleep, Carter. And then get your ass on the plane.”

“Yes, sir.”

She watched him walk away, then closed her eyes and put her head back against the wall. Slowly, Agent Margaret Carter smiled. She’d saved the world; she’d save her boyfriend’s best friend; she’d saved herself. It seemed the story could not have ended any better.

She couldn’t wait for the next to begin.

 

**THE END**

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To everyone who has read, left kudos, or commented on this story: thank you, thank you, THANK YOU. I am a long-time fanfic dreamer who lost her way a bit when it came to the actual writing, so it was incredible to come up with, develop, and then actually follow through with this story. 
> 
> On that note, an especially huge thanks to DominicKnight - without you, there would have been no brainstorming session and this new wealth of creativity I managed to dig up would never have come to be.
> 
> More soon? More soon. THANKS FOR READING, LOVES<3


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